All The Stars In Texas
by southspinner
Summary: Marco Bodt has always wanted to make the history books and has come to the conclusion that infamy looks far better on him than fame. Jean Kirschtein has always wanted to get out of Depression-ridden West Dallas. A chance meeting throws the spark that sets Texas on fire, and what started as something simple becomes a dangerous game of love, lust, and the birth of living legends.
1. Chapter 1 - Marco

_July, 1934_

I never did know how to apologize.

That's more of a crime than it seems when you're growing up on a lonely, sad little scrap of a farm a few miles outside of Telico and everything is church on Sundays and wearing clothes that belonged to two of your brothers before you because wastefulness is a sin along with everything else and your voice grows heavy with "Yes, Ma, yes, Pa," and "I know I should be grateful, I am grateful." The lies stick along your tongue and make every word you say feel gritty and sick. You break if you weren't broken already.

Maybe my old man was right and I've always been a lost cause. I couldn't apologize for sneaking the rifle out from above the mantle and shooting cans off fenceposts in the pasture when I was six any more than I could apologize for kissing some boy whose name I don't even remember now in the alley behind the hardware store when I was sixteen. I couldn't apologize when my little sister saw everything and ran home with her mouth shooting off before I could stop her. I couldn't apologize when I was standing in the middle of a dirt road with a hastily-packed suitcase and more bruises than I could count.

_Our son is dead._

The hell he is. I lived. I'm not sorry.

Four years later, I couldn't apologize for the circumstances that led to handcuffs around my wrists and the dirty insides of a jail cell.

The thing about prison is that it's not supposed to be comfortable. Something to do with an environment that makes you regret what you did to get there. Like sending a little kid that nipped from the cookie jar to time out.

Or a twenty-year-old that robbed two or five gas stations. Semantics, really.

At any rate, the McLennan County Jail was never designed for comfort, but it's something that can be gotten used to after a few months. It doesn't really hit home until you're scrabbling around on the dusty ground in the oppressive summer heat at some ungodly hour of the night going at a steel bar with a nail file like your life depends on it.

"Would you hurry up?" The hissed whisper barely makes it over the teeth-aching drag of steel on steel. "They'll be making another round God-knows-when and if they find you messin' around down there-"

"And I'd be getting this over with faster if you'd do something other than run your yap, Connie," I snap back, knuckles rubbed raw from repeated contact against the unyielding surface of the bar. Three long nights of work and not much to show for it other than two thin lines at the bottom and top of the aged, rusting steel. The one small perk of only being a petty criminal instead of someone like Al Capone or Jesse James is that it makes busting out of jail a hell of a lot easier. The one tiny block of cells in the place is lucky to see one patrol a night if the guard's not too drunk to get out of his chair, and that's fine by me, given the fact that Connie and I would both be in deep trouble if we didn't have that lax security and Bert's snoring the next cell over to cover up the grinding sound of the file.

"Well, you're the one that told me to be the lookout," Connie grumbles, glaring down at me from his bunk.

"And the whole pretense of a lookout is that you _only talk if someone's coming,_ you goof."

"No need to get so offended, I'm only trying to help."

"Connie. Shut up." Groaning under my breath, I lean forward until my forehead is resting against the cell door, the burning ache from my overworked arm starting to spread out across my shoulder and down my back. Most people would be regretting walking into that gas station with a .45 about now.

I can't. Not when every movie in Telico I could smooth talk my way into as a kid was about Jesse James and Billy The Kid, how the West was won and the guns in the hands of the outlaws that won it.

_Our son is dead._ Good luck saying that when he's staring back at you from the front page of the paper, from the insides of history books.

But maybe Connie is regretting it. Maybe that's why he's so on-edge as he watches from his bunk like a flustered little owl. I've been toting him around since we were kids, and I still remember the look on his face when the guns stopped being toys and the stakes climbed higher, remember the rush in my own veins driving down a dirt road with sirens fading steadily farther away. I never did know how to apologize.

So maybe Connie Springer was a good kid once. Maybe his bad apple of a best friend corrupted him. Maybe it should be some other idiot here in the big house with me while Connie's out living his life like an upstanding citizen, but that's just not how it played out, and I can't help but be a little glad for that as the bar finally gives way with a metallic clang and I slump back against the wall, covered in a sheen of sweat and panting.

Connie hops down from his bunk with eyes wide as saucers, shifting his weight nervously back and forth. "Oh, Christ. Oh, Christ, Marco, this was a bad idea."

"I'm the king of bad ideas," I smirk breathlessly, angling my feet through the widened space between the bars and starting to pray for all my long-time sinner's soul is worth that it'll be enough, out into the hallway up to my knees, my hips, my chest.

Up to the place where my shoulders get stuck and I can't move either forward or backward. "Oh shit."

"See, what'd I tell you?! You're gonna get stuck there and they'll come around before long and then we're both-"

"Connie! Don't blow your wig over a minor snag, all right, just get over here." Taking deep breaths to ready myself for the only solution we've got, I let my eyes drift shut for a moment before looking back at him. "I need you to dislocate my shoulder."

He looks at me like I've just told him to shoot someone. "What?"

"Just do it! You're smaller than me, you can fit through just fine, but we ain't getting me out of this thing unless my shoulder gets through." Gritting my teeth, I give one last halfhearted tug at the bars, already resigned to it. I've suffered more pain for less of a reason.

_Our son is dead._

When I met up with Connie by pure coincidence two years later, he looked at me like I was a ghost. They went the whole nine yards, had a funeral and buried an empty coffin on the family plot.

Marco got caught under a tractor. Poor boy was too mangled for a wake.

Look at me now, Pa. Look at me now.

Connie sucks in a breath and kneels down next to me, bracing a hand against either side of my shoulder. "You sure about this?"

"Hell, _I _could do this faster than you are, get on with it."

"All right, all right. On three."

He lunges forward on 'one' with the most god-awful popping noise I've ever heard, and somewhere between the hollow of my chest and my lips the agonizing scream turns into a peal of manic laughter, bouncing off the dirty concrete. My foot stomps repeatedly against the floor like I could grind out the pain under my shoe, loud enough that we're probably damn lucky that there's the muffled strains of a radio slipping under the door at the other end of the cell block.

"You crazy bastard." For all his hesitance at the beginning, Connie doesn't seem to waste much time in shoving me the rest of the way through into the open hallway before shimmying through the open space himself and grabbing for my shoulder again. "All right, gotta make this quick, and for God's sake keep it down this time."

My shoulder goes back into place with another hideous noise and a muffled yell colliding with the backs of my clenched teeth, and two seconds later we're on our feet, looking frantically back and forth between the door at the end of the cell block and the bar-covered window a few feet over our heads. Two equally dangerous options. "All right, which way are we thinking?"

"Well, we don't have time to file the bars off the window, and the boys up front have guns," Connie deadpans, fists clenching subtly at his sides. "So I'm thinking what I've been telling you since this shit show started. We're _fucked._"

"No we ain't, just calm down and let me think," I mutter, starting to pace.

"Y'all better stop thinking and make tracks, or you'll be doing your thinking in a new cell with a couple extra years on your sentence," Bert deadpans from the cell next to our busted-up one, now very much awake thanks to the noise from my impromptu shoulder surgery. "Nothing around here for miles. You'll want to be up the road before sunup."

"Which is what I've been telling Connie for days, but you see where that got us." Frowning, I take one last look from the door to the window, trying to figure out some solution. When we were kids, I could talk Connie and myself out of almost anything with a winning smile and some seat-of-the-pants lie that slipped far too easily from a child's lips for grown-ups to ever believe it. It's a little hard to sweet-talk your way through concrete and steel, though. These are not our bygone days of shoplifting dime store candy and climbing up the trees in Old Man Henderson's orchard to steal apples.

Or maybe I'm wrong.

Something clicks almost audibly in my head, and I wave Connie over hurriedly, looking up at the window over our heads. "Springer, give me a leg up."

"Oh, you strong enough to bend steel now, Marco? Because that would've been dead useful when-"

"Shut up and do it!"

Even though Connie's grumbling when he finally does kneel down and lace his hands together into a sturdy resting place for my foot, it's the same practiced motion of our childhood, steady and secure enough that I don't even wobble as I lean against the cold solidity of the wall and peer through the grimy window. A few seconds of silence, and then I burst into another too-loud laugh, hopping back down to the floor and gritting my teeth against the impact jarring painfully up through my shoulder. "I'll be goddamned. The bars on the window are a grate bolted to the outside, and those bolts are rusted all to hell."

"Yeah, and?" Connie snipes.

"And," I tell him, scooping up the filed-off steel bar from the floor and twirling it around like a baton. "We're getting out of here. Hoist me up again."

Someone has the good graces to cough over the sound of me busting out the window and banging at the rusted bolts, sending the little chips of metal spinning down to the grown six or seven feet below followed by the metallic thud of the grate hitting the ground. Connie and I take a few seconds to switch places - he'll have to pull me up since my shoulder might not hold the weight - and I turn back around to look at the cell block with a shit-eating smirk, all the rest of the inmates wide awake by now. "Happy trails, boys."

"You idiots'll be back here in a week," Bert snorts, lighting a cigarette and raising it to me in some mockery of a toast. "Run fast, Bodt."

"I always do," I reply, hopping down to the dusty ground outside with another bolt of pain up through my shoulder. McClennan County was poor even before the Depression hit, and it shows in the sad state of affairs that the jail is in, one guard tower and a sagging, tired-looking fence topped with rusty, blunted barbed wire. This won't even be anything to brag about.

"So are we just taking the fence as-is?" Connie whispers as the two of us hunker down around the corner from the guard tower, but I'm too busy timing the slow back-and-forth sweep of the lone searchlight to pay attention to him. Quiet. Lackadaisical. No shouting or alarms. They don't know we're gone yet. If we're really lucky, they might not know until morning. Connie punches me in my wounded shoulder. "Marco!"

"That hurt, you little shit," I hiss back, stomping down hard on his foot and clapping a hand over his mouth when he goes to let out a yell. "We got no choice but to just go headlong over the fence. No wire cutters, no buffer to throw over the top, no time. Besides, look how blunt that stuff is. Most you'll get's a hole in your shirt."

Connie swallows hard. "I sure hope so."

"You scared?" I laugh a little breathlessly.

"Aren't you?"

"Hell, no. I'm excited." Bouncing slightly on the balls of my feet, I look back at him with a wide grin. "You hear John Dillinger busted out of an escape-proof joint up in Indiana a few months ago? This is child's play, Connie. If he can do it, so can we."

"Yeah, and John Dillinger also got gunned down in an alley last week, so forgive me for not being as jazzed as you are," he gulps, cracking his knuckles and sucking in a breath.

Silence. A warm, dusty gust of wind. The sound of crickets. The searchlight reaches the end of its cycle.

"Fifteen seconds! Go!" Taking off at a sprint, I tug Connie after me, making a break for the fence and hitting the old chain link at top speed, hands and feet scrambling for purchase.

Being smaller than me and having two fully-functioning shoulders gives Connie the advantage. He vaults gracefully over the barbed wire before I'm even halfway up, landing in a little cloud of dust on the other side. Eight more seconds until I'm smack in the middle of a searchlight. I steady myself on the wobbling metal mesh and let out a curse. Seven. Head upwards with every ounce of strength I've got left in me. Six. Five. Four. Connie whispers something frantic that I don't hear. Three.

I go to swing over the fence with two seconds left, but my shoulder gives out at the top of my arc, bringing my weight crashing down on top of the coil of barbed wire. I was right about its bluntness, but one sharp little spike of metal still manages to carve a long, shallow cut across my stomach as I tumble over to the other side, landing hard on my back enough to knock the wind painfully from my lungs. The stars are almost unnaturally bright as I stare up at them through the haze of the searchlight passing over my head. The sky as seen by a free man.

"You oughta look into Olympic gymnastics, brother," Connie snickers, and I reach up to smack him across the back of the head as I remember how to breathe again, waiting for the searchlight to complete another cycle before I roll up onto my knees.

"Run," I wheeze, waving towards the gleaming pinprick of the North star. "Run."

And we do.

The miles pass like a rabbit's heartbeat, fleeting and jumpy, skittering through the darkness with wide eyes and held breaths at every noise. We head North, away from the danger that comes with being near Waco's higher population and more concentrated police forces, but that comes at the cost of wandering dirt roads in pitch darkness. There isn't much between McClennan County and Dallas other than desolate farms and empty fields, no real cover or places to hide, but we at least have the small fortune of not encountering anyone for the first few hours, sticking to the tall, dry stalks of grass clinging to the dusty earth.

"You got any idea whereabouts we are?" Connie groans, the interruption of the quiet we've maintained making me jump. "I wanna be home already. Sleep in a real bed, have myself a hot meal, see my wife…"

"Your wife's like to skin you alive when she sees you've busted out of jail. I wouldn't want you to get your hopes up," I scoff, rubbing at my sore shoulder and finally stopping to take a breath. "And I'm not sure. We've probably made it at least ten miles."

"How many miles between Waco and Dallas?"

"Around a hundred, I figure."

Connie slumps to the ground with a defeated expression, running a hand back over his close-cropped hair. "Well, shit."

"We ain't getting there any faster by you sitting on your ass," I snap, hauling him up by the back of his shirt collar and looking around. "We need to find shelter before the sun's up, anyway. First sight someone catches of us, we're right back in the big house."

"I know, I know." He looks and sounds like a petulant child, dragging his feet along behind me as we cut across barren fields, kicking up dust in our wake and biting back coughs. Exhaustion pulls at my bones, but Connie's so dead on his feet that he runs right into me when I stop short, looking at the silhouette of a farmhouse against the gray-tinged sky of almost morning. "What? Why are we stopping?"

I don't give him a straight answer, just purse my lips and tug him forward by the wrist. "Come on."

"Marco, what in the high holy hell!"

Growling in exasperation, I finally round on him, fatigue and the pain from my shoulder driving me to one notch short of landing a right hook to his jaw. "Look at yourself, Connie! Look at the both of us! We're covered in dirt and walking around in prison clothes. We just waltz into West Dallas looking like this, what do you think'll happen?"

He blinks at me silently for a second, tilts his head to the side.

"Don't bother thinking, I can already smell something burning," I mutter, stalking off across the field without him.

Connie gets the picture after a few seconds, jogs to catch up with me. "So we break into someone's house and hope they'll be nice enough to give the passing convicts a change of clothes?"

"Look at the _door,_ you twit." He's at least got the mental capacity to look where I'm pointing, squinting through the darkness at the stark white square of a piece of paper nailed to the door. "Eviction notice. The bank took the farm. Even if there's nothing left inside, it's still somewhere to hide out for the day."

"Oh."

"Yeah, _oh._" If my eyes rolled any farther, I'd be staring at the inside of my head.

Now secure in the knowledge that we won't be walking straight into someone storming out onto their porch with a shotgun to meet us, Connie practically scampers up to the house, peering in through the dirty windows. "Yup, looks like nobody's home. Couple boxes sitting in the front room by the looks of it. Maybe some clothes if we're lucky."

Since when have we been lucky? I stopped believing in luck the day my life came crashing down around my head. Something in me went bitter and cold in the wake of finding myself sixteen and staring down the gaping maw of the world with an empty stomach and empty hands. It was hard to believe that there was anything out there on my side after weeks of drifting from town to town with nothing to aim for other than survival. My lack of capacity for optimism might come from my own circumstances, but after the night we've had, I'm not about to crush Connie's hope. Instead, I just nod sleepily as he kneels down next to the door, fiddling with the knob.

"All right, looks like a simple enough lock, if we can find a pocket knife or something lying around I should be able to-"

Determination to preserve my idiot best friend's sense of childlike wonder or no, I'm tired and growing antsier the higher the sun climbs into the sky. I give him a few seconds to mess with the damn thing before shoving him out of the way, bracing myself against the porch railing, and kicking the damn thing halfway off its hinges. "Done."

As it turns out, maybe there is some luck in the world. The boxes in the living room are full of clothes - a little big on Connie and a little small on me, but better than black and white stripes any day - and more importantly, the key to our salvation sitting out back.

"So the bank took the car, too?" Connie asks as I'm poking around under the hood of the Model T, shifting his weight back and forth.

"Looks like it," I shrug, frowning and sticking my hand down beside the engine. "I sure as hell ain't complaining."

"Well, no, but…" he trails off, raising an eyebrow. "Hey, what are you doing?"

"I'm starting the car."

Connie looks almost appalled. "So we break into these folks' house and take their clothes, and now you're hot wiring their car?"

"What're they gonna do, send me to prison?" I smirk, exulting in the sound of the engine rattling to life. "Besides, Connie, I'm not doing anything too morally reprehensible."

"You don't figure?"

"No, I don't," I shake my head, grinning even wider. "Technically, I'm not stealing this car from hardworking citizens. I'm stealing it from the bank. Now get in. You wanna see your girl before the day's out or not?"

There's a certain sense of liberation inherent in the hum of the engine vibrating through the steering wheel and into my bones, dust kicking up as the two of us burn rubber up the dirt road from the foreclosed farm. Connie's been riding shotgun with me through two years of broken speed limits and rushed getaways, but that doesn't stop him from gripping the dashboard like a lifeline every time I whip around a curve. "D'you have to go so damn fast?"

"Do you have to tell me how to drive?" I counter, steering with my knee long enough to finish rolling the sleeves of my stolen shirt up around my elbows. "How many tight spots have I gotten us out of with a vehicle? Put me behind a wheel and I'm unstoppable."

The engine dies a mile outside of Dallas.

"Don't say anything," I groan, leaning forward and resting my forehead against the steering wheel.

"Wasn't planning on it," Connie says sharply, hopping out of the passenger side "I'm walking home, and you're figuring out something to do until I get the missus calmed down enough to accept your presence."

"You're _joking,_" I gape.

"I'm as far from joking as I can possibly get," he seethes, brushing the dust off his oversized pants and trying to look dignified while hiking them up almost to his chest. "It was your idea to bust out. Your idea to steal the car. _Your idea to rob the goddamned gas station in the first place._ So you can lie in the bed you made for a few hours, Marco; that is the _least_ you can do while I try to get all this shit that _you started_ sorted out."

"Et tu, Brute?" I grumble, glaring out the window at him.

"I don't speak Spanish!" And without another word, Connie turns on his heel and stomps off up the road.

I sit there in a daze until he's nothing but a speck on the horizon, staring out the gritty windshield at the open, empty road. The sun is rising to the East, and it's not too hot yet, but within an hour or two the Texas summer will be in full swing. And I'll be sitting here. On the side of the road in a dead-as-a-doornail Model T. Fuming under my breath, I fling open the driver's side door and stalk around to the front of the car to fling up the hood. Lots of black smoke and acrid smells.

"Goddammit," I whisper almost disbelievingly, numb for a moment before the utter rage at the unfairness of it all settles in my veins and I kick hard enough at the front tire to send a bloom of pain up my leg. "God_dammit_!"

A little cloud of dust kicks up in the distance, and I'm not stupid enough to hope that it's Connie having a change of heart and coming back. Despite the fact that he's an absolute bastard for leaving me out here, I can't deny that I deserve it to some extent. He was an upstanding member of society before I came along, had himself a girl and a job and a _life,_ and maybe it was because I'd never known what it was to be that well-adjusted that it was so easy for me to drag him into a year of car chases and cash that we blew on God knows what. I had nothing to lose by getting myself thrown in prison. Connie lost more than he's been willing to admit until now. Just because I don't know how to apologize doesn't mean I can't feel remorse when it matters.

The dust cloud grows, heralding the arrival of a truck that's more rust than anything else, the brakes giving an unholy screech when it stops beside me and its driver hops out onto the road. Roughly my age, maybe a bit younger, blond hair trimmed into a shaggy undercut that could do with a touch-up, a sort of unconscious swagger in his step that matches the brassy tenor of his voice when he walks over and nods down at the abysmal wreck of the Model T's engine. "Car trouble?"

"Why on earth would you think that? I'm just stopping for a little rest," I deadpan, already on-edge. Just because I'm not dressed like a fugitive anymore doesn't make me safe, and there's something incredibly perceptive in the newcomer's tawny eyes that has my better judgement yelling at me to run. But taking off would draw more suspicion than I'm willing to risk, so I settle for evasive maneuvers instead and do what I do best - lie. "I'll be all right. My friend's up the road hunting down the nearest mechanic."

"He won't have much luck finding him," he laughs, leaning against the side of his truck and digging a cigarette and a book of matches out of the pocket of his pants.

"That so?" I mumble, guarded. "Why not?"

"Because I'm the nearest mechanic." His smile is more on the side of a smirk, lopsided but sort of endearing in its crookedness. He laughs again at the look on my face, striking the match on his thumbnail and lighting his smoke before sticking his hand in my direction. "Jean Kirschtein."

"Marco," I nod, shaking his hand and watching him intently. There's something in the way he holds himself that doesn't say blue-collar despite his claims of being a mechanic, no weary stoop to his shoulders and something the posture of someone who expects to be acknowledged, and the hand that grips mine doesn't have calluses that match my own. Whoever Jean Kirschtein is, he doesn't come from a lifetime of being up before the sun and working until you bleed. Not a farm boy for sure, but not a city boy either. He's got a solid set to his spine and strong-looking shoulders that stretch as he leans down to peer through the smoke at the busted engine, and now is _not _the time to be appreciating the aesthetic value of strangers, Bodt, Jesus Christ. "So, you think it's salvageable?"

Jean stands back up and runs a hand through his hair, frowning down at the car. "I can fix it, but not here, and not without parts. Tell you what, I was just on my way home to grab some things I forgot. If you can give me ten minutes or so to do that, I'll give you a lift into town to find your friend and we can tow this thing back to the shop?"

Well, Connie did tell me to find something to do. He never said what. And it's better than sitting on the side of the road waiting for death.

"I'd appreciate it," I grin, slamming the hood of the Model T shut and jumping up into the passenger side of his truck.

Jean Kirschtein the mechanic who acts more like a rich kid gives me a look that I know all too well as he climbs in the driver's side and shuts the door behind him. Down. Back up. Little quirk of a smile. He thinks he's being subtle, God bless him.

Connie can keep his picket fence and the salvageable wreckage of his life for a few more hours. There are some perks of freedom that I've been missing something awful.


	2. Chapter 2 - Jean

After being told for the vast majority of my life that I didn't have a lick of common sense, I sort of just stopped listening.

Dad was always worse about it than anyone else, constantly blustering about _compromising this family's future with your stupid pipe dreams, Jean, _and the ever-popular _don't come crying to me when you realize that life ain't a fairy tale, boy; I've been telling you that for years._

Ironic. It was actually the Depression that compromised my family's future, and I couldn't go crying to my father because it was him eating a bullet for breakfast the morning after my sixteenth birthday that made me realize life was anything but a fairy tale. So even if in the long run I never had a lick of common sense, I at least had enough of it to live.

Just not enough, apparently, to keep me from picking up strangers on the side of the road when I'm already thirty minutes late for work.

Marco, whose last name I never caught, is quiet for the duration of the drive. Polite, but quiet. Mostly sticks to one-word answers, stares out the window like there's something important to see in all that swirling dust.

"So, where were y'all headed in from?" I ask, remembering he'd mentioned a friend.

"Waco." One-word answer, yet again.

"Long trip. You head out before sunup?"

"Yup."

I look over at him for a long moment, try to figure him out. The bags under his round hazel eyes and the slight slump to his shoulders say exhaustion, but there's a sharpness in his gaze that's more alert, more _alive_ than anything I've seen in the dried-up dirtball that calls itself West Dallas in a hell of a long time. It's inherent in the way he keeps shifting his focus every few seconds, the way his hand has been resting on the door handle ever since he got in the truck. Not nervous, but vigilant. More freckles than a factory full of Raggedy Ann dolls, too; those stick out almost as much as the strange, flighty way he carries himself.

I don't have enough common sense to realize that I should be looking where I'm driving, and the truck hits a pothole with a gut-lurching rattle, pitching us both forward in our seats. Marco just about jumps through the rusted-out ceiling, eyes widening as his grip on the door handle tightens.

"Sorry," I rush out, jerking the wheel to the side even after the fact and lurching across the road. "Can't see a damn thing with the dust. Paved roads don't start 'til you get into town."

"S'fine." I wonder if it takes practice, being able to carry on a legitimate conversation one word at a time. He slumps back into his seat after another moment, exhaling heavily and rubbing a hand along his jawline.

Pursing my lips, I listen to make sure the impact didn't knock something off in the transmission before speeding back up and watching him again, just a passing glance this time, the dirt on his shirt, the mess of dark hair under a faded newsboy cap. "You look like you've had a hell of a day."

Suddenly enough that I almost drive off the road again, Marco lets out a peal of laughter that bounces around the cab of the truck, leaning forward and slapping at his knee as his face splits into the first smile I've seen since I've met him. Something about my observation must really be hilarious, because he cackles for a good minute before turning back to me, still sputtering out little chuckles. "Pal, you got no idea."

Five words. I feel oddly like I've just received a gift.

I know better than to think that anyone I happen to meet doesn't have it rough. The way things are now, everyone's lost something. Jobs. Homes. Dreams.

Fathers.

Still, that doesn't stop the little internal cringe that pulls somewhere in my gut as we turn a sharp corner and drive down an even rougher road up to the front of a tiny house on its last leg, the roof shedding shingles like a stray dog in summer and the porch sagging, letting out a weary groan beneath our feet when Marco and I hop out of the truck and head for the front door. A house as tired as the people who live in it.

"It's me," I call back the narrow front hallway boots grinding dust into the floorboards with every step. "I forgot-"

"Your lunch. I know." My mother's head pokes out from the kitchen before the rest of her, the fact that she's skinnier than she used to be cast into sharp relief in a threadbare secondhand dress. Still pretty, though, the somewhat-faded memory of a woman who used to be the envy of the better part of East Texas despite there now being more gray than blonde in her hair and the raw, soap-cracked hands that used to go in for a manicure every two weeks. She still walks like she's wearing designer heels even in bare feet, gliding down the hallway and handing me the lunch pail I'd run off and left on the table. "You'll be late now. I was going to send it with Ninette later."

"And I'd rather be late than have Nettie walking by herself on that road." Shaking my head and grimacing at the idea, I lean down and press a kiss to her cheek. "Eren can live without me for a few more minutes."

"And who's this?"

Marco looks like a deer in the headlights for a beat, blinking quickly before he recovers his composure and settles into a soft smile, hurriedly taking off his hat and extending a hand in her direction. "'Fraid I'm part of the reason he's late. Had some car trouble up the road and your son was nice enough to help me out. Marco Bodt. Pleasure to meet you, ma'am."

Mom positively _beams,_ shaking his hand in a delicate, practiced motion. The last time someone was such a gentleman to her, she was probably still wearing pearls and a mink stole. I go ahead and decide that I like Marco Bodt, who now has a last name, if for no other reason than that. "The pleasure's all mine. I'm glad he found you. Lord knows it's a hike into town from out here-"

"_Jean!"_

The screen door rattles open behind us, and a short, frantic blur blasts down the hall and attaches itself to my waist, the loss of momentum giving way to a weedy little eight-year-old in a dust-covered dress, blonde braided pigtails and a gap between her front teeth that makes her tongue hiss as it goes a million miles a minute. "Are you back?! Do you have the day off?! If you're going back into town take me with you! I'm bored and you're never here and you said you were going to take me to the movies!"

"Woah, slow it down a second," I laugh, peeling my little sister off of me and ruffling the stray wisps of hair that have escaped her braids. Her knees and elbows are scraped, her breaths ragged like she's been running for a while. Frowning, I reach down and run my fingers along the torn cotton collar of her worn-out dress. "You been fighting with Mr. Wagner's boy again?"

"He pushed me first!"

"_Ninette,_" Mom hisses, a rant about what a lady does and does not do already on the horizon.

"He wouldn't let me play baseball with him and the Reebs boys because he said there ain't no girls in baseball, so I told him that he could take the bat and shove it where the sun don't shine. Then he shoved me, so I punched him in the face. I hurt my hand, but then I had to run because there was more of 'em than me." Nettie shrugs, examining the dirt caked under her nails. Mom lets out a mortified gasp. Marco starts laughing so hard he has to grab the coat rack for support. It's almost like Ninette hadn't even noticed him standing there until now, tilting her head to the side and abandoning me to trot over and peer up at him, a fascinating new discovery. "Are you one of Jean's friends?"

"Sure am," he nods, using the same courtesy he extended to my mother when he reaches down and shakes her little, dirty hand. "Name's Marco. Nice to meet you."

Mom sort of hovers in the background, tutting over the state of Ninette's clothes for a moment before looking up at the rest of us apologetically. "I need to go get her a fresh dress; give me a moment…"

Marco watches her walk back down the hall, making sure she's out of earshot before he squats down to Ninette's eye level, eyes glinting and a little smirk playing at his lips. "Show me how you hit him."

She breaks into a gap-toothed grin and balls her hand up in a fist, doing an exaggerated wind-up like she's getting ready to throw a fastball. "'Bout like this, I reckon."

"See, that's why you got hurt," Marco nods, placing a hand over her fist and gently prying her fingers apart. "Never throw a punch with your thumb inside your fist. You can up and break your own bones that way. Thumb on the _outside,_" he continues, adjusting her grip before backing away so she can see her own hand, "and you got more knuckles to hit with. Next time you break that little ankle-biter's jaw 'stead of your hand, all right?"

"All right," she nods enthusiastically, but every trace of her smile dies when Mom comes back down the hall with the most uncomfortable, most undeniably _pink_ dress she owns. "Aw, _Ma._"

"Go wash up and change, young lady, and then you and I are going over to the Wagner's so you can apologize," Mom snipes, giving Nettie a little push down the hall until she eventually sulks off into the bedroom they share. She looks at Marco and I like we're afterthoughts, almost surprised that we're still standing here. "You two should get going. The dust'll only get worse the longer you wait."

"If I didn't know better I'd say you were trying to get rid of me," I laugh, slipping my lunch pail over one arm and leaning down to pull her into a hug with the other. "Eren might keep me late tonight. I should be back before you put Nettie to bed."

Speak of the frilly-dressed devil, she comes shuffling dejectedly out into the hall after a few more seconds, resignation in her posture but murder in her eyes. Marco laughs again, putting his hat back on and tipping it slightly to my mother and sister in succession. "Mrs. Kirschtein. Miss Ninette. It was good to meet y'all, but Jean and I both have business to get around to. Have a nice day."

"You too, sweetie. Hope your car gets fixed up soon," Mom smiles at him, heading back to the kitchen. Marco waits until her back is turned to hold up a fist and wink at Ninette, mouthing _thumb on the outside_ before he turns on his heel and ambles off the front porch. The last thing I see before I shut the front door behind me is my sister giggling and holding up her own chapped-knuckled hand in response.

"So, you're a charmer when you've got half a mind to be," I snort once we're back in the truck, praying under my breath until the engine turns over and we're headed back up the road in a cloud of dusty earth.

And it's right back to careful glances and thought-out answers, back to eyes fixed down the endless expanse of the road. "Your folks seem nice. Your little sister's cute."

"Ain't she a pistol?" I laugh, blowing a cloud of dust past the broken-down Model T and nudging the speedometer a little higher.

"Yeah," Marco nods, the corner of his mouth twitching up into a slanted line. "Reminds me a lot of my little sister."

It's the first bit of real information he's given me. I latch onto it more quickly than I probably should, grinning as I reach down to shift gears. "How old's yours? Nettie's eight."

Any trace of levity on his face dies. If I had more leeway to watch carefully, I might take note of how Marco practically crumples in his seat, spine bowing inwards like he's trying to curl around something in himself to keep it from escaping. But as it is, I only really process the twitch of sadness across his face, eyebrows knitting together as he peels fingers out of the fist clenched in his lap. One, two, three, four.

"She's ten," he says.

I think of the headlines about people in the big cities up north lining up for bread, about shanty-towns built of cardboard and the tired, empty-eyed men staring out from the cars every time a train rolls through the tracks laid along the other side of town, and I realize that I probably shouldn't have asked. "Ain't seen your folks in a while, then?"

"No." He shakes his head, voice soft and eyes out of focus. "No, not in a while."

"You been out looking for work, then?"

Almost like he's caught his own lapse, Marco sits up a bit straighter, giving me a sidelong glance and a smirk that sends a chill down my spine for a reason I can't place. In his moth-eaten cap and messy hair, teeth flashing white in contrast to tan, freckly skin, the first thing that comes to mind when I look at him is an illustration in a copy of _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland _that I had when I was a kid. The Cheshire Cat. Enigmatic, vaguely dangerous, appearing with a knife-edged smile one moment and gone the next.

"You sure are curious about me, Jean Kirschtein," he hums, and the words feel like a sharp edge traced cautiously across bare skin. "You know what they say about curiosity."

I know exactly what they say about curiosity. In fact, what they say about curiosity mingled with the looks he's giving me should have me booting him out of the car at thirty miles an hour and vowing to never be a Good Samaritan again. That's what my instincts are telling me, at any rate, but I've never been very good at listening to them. When I was a little kid, Mom had to put the nice candlesticks up beyond my reach because she'd walk into a room and find me running my fingers back and forth through the flames, slower and slower until the warm kiss of a near-escape became the searing flash of a burn. I'd climb on a chair and pull them down when she wasn't looking. Years later, there are scars where my fingerprints should be, and I still haven't learned to stop playing with fire.

I swallow hard, steering with my knee and reaching into the breast pocket of my shirt for a cigarette. "I'm not... I... There's just been a lot of folks through here looking for work, is all."

Marco laughs, kicking his feet up on the dashboard and propping his hands behind his head, the most relaxed I've seen him yet. He's got a way of commanding a space, of making you feel like he owns whatever patch of the universe he occupies even if you know he doesn't. That knowing smile stretches lazily across his face the longer he looks at me, and even though I make sure to keep my eyes fixed on the road it still feels like something is crawling around under my skin with warm pricks of energy. "Not interested in work. I'm out seeking my great perhaps."

"Good luck finding it here," I snort, slowing down as we start to roll past dilapidated buildings and thin bodies shuffling along the sides of the road. West Dallas in all its glory. "Nothing here but dust and poor people."

"You're here," he points out, snatching the cigarette from my lips and taking a drag, raising an eyebrow as if daring me to say something about it.

"Yeah, and I'm one of the aforementioned dusty poor people."

Marco snickers, brushing the dust off his shirt. "Oh, 'aforementioned.' You sure do talk fancy for a poor boy."

"I wasn't always poor." Shrugging, I decide that it's probably not best to drag a new acquaintance into that Greek Tragedy of a story. Marco's got secrets of his own, if his mannerisms and the distant look on his face when he'd mentioned being away from his family are anything to go by. Maybe that mutual distance is something that needs to be maintained. "Although I don't see what that's got to do with it."

"I was always poor. Seven kids on a dried-up patch of land in Telico and you're bound to wear a few hand-me-downs," he replies almost conversationally, looking out the window at the bustle of the street as I turn the corner to pull into the back lot of the garage. "You know what, Jean Kirschtein, I like you."

The truck makes an ungodly death rattle when I turn it off that almost covers the sound of me laughing and asking, "Yeah? Why's that?"

"Because you realize that poor and stupid ain't mutually inclusive." There's that Cheshire Cat smile again, another little jolt down my spine that feels almost like a warning. I choose to ignore it, grabbing my lunch pail out of the floorboard and slamming the door shut with my hip.

Life is not a fairytale, and characters don't walk off their pages and into real life. It's more complex than that, more sinister, and I'd do well to remember that. The fact that the voice of my caution is identical to my father's should resonate more than it does.

I'm edging closer and closer to a full hour late to work, but something keeps me rooted to the ground, held back from barging through the garage's back door and listening to Eren get himself worked up even though we get three clients on a good day and we both know he's keeping me around because he doesn't want to watch my family starve. I should go to work, do my duty, stop thinking like a child. Life is not a fairytale.

I know that. God, do I know that.

"Hey, Marco."

"Mm?" He's almost smoked his way through the entirety of my cigarette, leaning against the front bumper of the truck and quirking his head to the side to acknowledge me.

"How'd you end up on the side of the road this morning?" I mutter.

He just smiles. Smiles like he's got a whole world full of secrets tucked into his pocket and he knows that I want to find out what they are, and I was never supposed to be Alice, I was supposed to stay on the path I'd carved out for myself and be content with it. It's taken two years to even get that far. Two years, and one stop for a stranger on the side of the road feels like falling headfirst down the rabbit hole.

"My car broke down," Marco says, a lilt of almost-laughter to his voice like he's waiting for me to get the joke.

"And before that?"

His laughter in the car was different, the edges sharper and the sound more commanding. Now it's a whisper, somehow stronger in its softness, mixing with the dust in the air on a cloud of smoke as he leans forward and perches his elbows on the hood of the truck. Smiling, smiling, never faltering. Still waiting for me to get it. "What if I told you that I'm just a poor farm boy from Telico out looking for some honest work and that I hit a patch of bad luck this morning, and you just happened to save me?"

'_Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'_

'_That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat._

'_I don't much care where—' said Alice._

'_Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat._

"I'd say that I think you're lying." I don't need a verbal response to know that I've hit the nail on the head. Marco's smile widens around the cigarette into that toothy grin again, something sparking in his eyes, amusement lighting up the darker tones of hazel. I've somehow made it to the punchline.

"And what if," he hums, and if life were a fairytale I might call it an honest-to-God _purr,_ letting the smoldering remnants fall from his fingers to the ground in time with another curious tilt of his head, "I told you that I'm just a poor farm boy from Telico who robbed five stores, broke out of prison, stole a car, and that I hit a patch of bad luck this morning, and you just happened to save me?"

"I'd believe you," I counter, mirroring his posture and leaning on the other side of the hood of the truck, meeting his gaze evenly. He looks almost surprised, like he's not used to people having the fortitude to do it. "And I'd tell you to keep your mouth shut about it to everyone else around here, go find your friend, and give me a few days to get your car fixed up."

"You'd still fix the car." Not a question. Not a plea. An observation. He shakes his head and huffs out a sharp breath. "Now why would you do that?"

A good question. Why would I? I'd have to be stark raving mad to consider giving him a hand if what he's just indirectly told me is true.

'_Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat. 'We're all mad here.' _

"Are you gonna stand there and question my motives, or are you gonna take a lucky break where you can find it?" I finally respond, trying to put a gruff edge on my voice so I don't sound as vulnerable as I feel. "Moreover, why would you tell me something like that if you weren't certain I would help you out?"

He laughs again, that same soft, whispered sound, reaches over the car and plucks another cigarette out of my breast pocket. I don't even have time to offer him a light before he smirks and flashes my half-empty book of matches in his palm - when the hell did he snag those? - and strikes one on his thumbnail, watching it burn for a good while before he even lights the smoke. "You really are somethin' else, Jean Kirschtein."

"Yeah, well." I can't think of any other response, scuffing my foot back and forth through the dirt and wishing I could remember how to be eloquent. "Guess that's lucky for you, ain't it. Now you might wanna clear out. I've got a verbal ass-whooping waiting for me in there, and I'll need to spin some story up about the car. Give me three days."

"I'll give you two," Marco says, wandering around the front bumper. "You know the Springers?"

"You talking about Sasha Springer?" I frown, not sure where he's headed with that question. "Kinda tall lady, brown hair, real pretty, sorta seems like she could snap you in half if you got her mad enough?"

He nods, rolling the cigarette contemplatively between his fingers. "Bingo. I'll be there for the next few days. You know. In case you need to keep me posted on the car."

I should backpedal now. I should smile and nod and go right inside and phone the sheriff. I should do something other than standing here feeling like a fish on a line, an invisible hook tugging at something in the pit of my stomach as I tighten my grip on the handle of my lunch pail and honestly say, "All right. I'll drop by."

"Looking forward to it," Marco replies, walking over to the edge of the back lot and rounding the corner back out to the street.

I swear to God, I can see his smile long after the rest of him is gone.


	3. Chapter 3 - Marco

Staying in one place for more than a few nights at a time feels strange. The last time I woke up looking at a consistent ceiling over my head, I was still at home, although I can't quite be sure that the word ever applied to that place after what happened there. _Home_ is just a foreign concept to some people. Maybe that's bad. Maybe it isn't.

Give me a steering wheel in one hand and a gun in the other. That's it. That's home.

Or at least that's the closest thing to it I'm ever likely to get.

Instead of _home,_ I get waking up in Connie and Sasha's living room, staring at the cracked ceiling and listening to them bicker in the kitchen. Some long-gone part of me remembers mornings under a handmade quilt with a rooster screeching outside the window, remembers my brothers jumping on the bed and telling me to get up, remembers what the very last smile my mother ever gave me looked like.

More of me remembers the roof sagging and the bank coming by twice a week, remembers my little sister's skirt swishing around an alley corner and how it was too late by the time I got home, remembers screaming and _pain_ and Ma's face looking like she'd never smile again and _our son is dead _and…

Stop. Breathe. Memories and nightmares of what you can never change are things for people with no future. Then is gone. Now is Connie and Sasha's living room, the floorboards creaking, the steadily rising voices in the kitchen.

"I mean it, Connie Springer, you are goin' back!"

"Baby, you don't know what it's like in there!"

"I am calling the sheriff as soon as I get this laundry done and you are turning yourself in. A fresh start, you said. Going straight, you said. What do you call this?!"

Breathe. Live for now. Then is remembering how the raw snap of Sasha's voice sounds a little bit too much like my mother's. Now is getting up and deciding to go save Connie's ass the way I've been doing since we were kids. Stretching my arms up over my head and yawning, I shuffle into the kitchen, still in the stolen clothes from the farmhouse and looking much worse for wear than I'd like to admit. "Technically, this could be your fresh start. Y'all could pack up your things, take off over the state line. I hear Colorado's real nice."

Sasha Springer is pin-up pretty, long chestnut hair and big doe eyes, but she's absolutely terrifying when she's angry. Before I even have time to come up with something witty, she's across the kitchen and swatting my arm with the wooden spoon in one hand while reaching up with the other to grab me by the ear like some sort of misbehaving child. "And _you._ I don't want to hear a lick of input from you, Marco Bodt. You're a bad influence. You put him up to this!"

"All due respect, ma'am, but I just busted out of the cell. Connie following me was a choice of his own accord."

She hits me with the spoon again.

"Connie, you wanna control your woman long enough for me to get breakfast?" I deadpan.

"Control his woman. Control _his_ woman, I oughta-" Sasha raises the spoon again so threateningly that I actually flinch, but Connie wraps an arm around her waist and guides her off to the other side of the kitchen murmuring platitudes about _he don't mean nothing by it, baby_ and _we're all a little edgy, it's the damn heat_ under his breath. It hasn't struck me until now just how off-balance I am on someone else's home turf. Hell, I came in here to save Connie's ass, and he ended up saving mine.

Getting myself some of the leftover oatmeal off the stove is an uncomfortable affair with Sasha glaring at me the whole time, but I've gotten used to feeling like there's a drill going through the back of my head every time we're in the same room together after three long, agonizing days. Sasha's lived in West Dallas all her life, managed to rope Connie in three years ago when he came through looking for work, and while the me of my childhood would have insisted that nothing could domesticate Connie Springer, it only takes watching the stupid, dopey looks he gives her all the time to prove me wrong. Dumbass.

He doesn't detach from her side until I've already finished breakfast and gone to wash up, squinting into the gritty shaving mirror bolted to the bathroom wall when he sticks his head through the doorway. "You all right, brother? The missus has a mean spoon hand."

"Y'know," I hum thoughtfully, swiping my razor up and down the leather strap next to the mirror a few times to sharpen it before going back to business. "Women are beautiful creatures. They're pretty, and they have sweet smiles, and they smell nice. Sometimes I wonder why I don't want anything to do with 'em. And then your wife opens her mouth, and I remember."

"Hey!" Connie snaps, taking a swipe at me that I manage to dodge while still shaving. "That's my girl you're talking about. Watch it."

"Wouldn't be nobody hitting anybody with no goddamned spoon in a house full of men," I grumble, rinsing the razor off one last time and reaching for a towel to wipe the leftover stripes of foam off my jawline.

"And if this was a house full of men you'd be way too happy," he snorts, throwing a bundle of fabric at me. Fresh clothes. "Sasha said to tell you to change. You look like a hobo."

"Yeah, 'cause I'll fit in your clothes. You caught yourself a real smart one, Con."

"Don't be a jerk." This time he actually does land a hit on me, a sharp jab to the side that sends a flash of pain across my torso. "They're leftovers from her laundry business, clothes people never came to pick up."

Nothing fancy - brown pants, an off-white shirt, new pair of suspenders - but they're in far better condition and of a more suitable size than what I've got on. Defeated by my own vanity, I sigh and shove Connie back out into the hallway. "Fine. Tell her I said thank you."

I keep the stolen newsboy cap, though. I like the looks of it, and it's a souvenir of one hell of an adventure.

Sasha is outside putting the wares of her laundry business on the line when I get out of the bathroom, and by the time she walks back in I'm sitting at the kitchen table rolling my cigarettes for the day and trying to look like I'm staying out of trouble for fear that she still has that spoon with her.

"You look better," she says tersely, clutching a pile of folded sheets to her chest with detergent-cracked hands. "Not so much like a lawless delinquent."

"I assure you, Mrs. Springer, I'm still a lawless delinquent," I tell her in a flat voice, tapping my last cigarette on the table and slipping it into my breast pocket. "Just a better-dressed one, for which I'm thankful to you."

"You're welcome," she snaps like she'd rather be saying _go take a long walk off a short pier,_ flouncing off into the living room with her laundry and a haughty little sniff.

"Where's Connie?" I ask, following her out of the kitchen and jamming my hands in my pockets. God knows I've got nothing better to do than sit around and play innumerable hands of poker with him until sundown.

"He's out in the back helping hang things up." The implication that I should be doing the same sits so heavy on her voice that I'm almost shocked at the lack of subtlety.

"Nice of him," I nod, tipping my hat in her direction and heading for the front door. "If y'all need me, I'll be out running a few errands."

"Are you - well, it's pointless to ask if you're crazy, but _really?_" Sasha slams her armful of laundry down with pursed lips, glowering at me. "You're on the run from the law and you're just gonna waltz around West Dallas like you own the place."

"That's the plan," I shrug, opening the door and turning around to shoot her a little smirk before I hop off the porch. "Besides, I got nothing to worry about. I ain't famous enough for my own wanted posters. Yet."

It's hot for morning, the late July sunshine beating down combining with the dust hanging in the air to make everything feel heated and prickly, an uncomfortable tickle in the back of my throat from inhaling the grit and the dirt. But despite that, I breathe a little easier.

After three days, that house had become another prison. I feel like I just busted out all over again.

West Dallas is busy, loud and dusty and undeniably poverty-stricken, people crossing the with slumped shoulders and worn clothes. The same principles I was raised on apply even in the city, apparently. Sun up. Time to go to work. Work until you physically can't, and then keep going. Sweat and bleed and be grateful for what little you get out of it.

Pa never did understand the concept of working smarter instead of harder.

For every open door I pass, there are three boarded up storefronts signaling who knows how many families without a source of income. I could count the places that are actually doing business on one hand. A dilapidated five-and-dime with the porch sinking dangerously. A diner with dust so thick on the windows that the people inside just look like vague blurs. A grocery store with nothing on the shelves but a meager selection of canned food. The only place that seems to actually be thriving is a pawnshop on the corner, a long line of hollow faces and desperate eyes winding out the door. Fathers coming with heirloom pocket watches in hand to cover a little of last month's rent. Mothers bearing wedding rings so their children can go to bed without crying from hunger pains. All those tender little sentiments in life have a way of not meaning as much when your belly's gnawing on your backbone.

Anyone else might be disgusted that someone's making a profit off the misfortunes of others, but I have a little too much in common with the jolly-looking pawnbroker behind the counter to cast the first stone. I've done my share of shady profiting, and I'd sooner be a thief than a hypocrite.

The garage where Jean Kirschtein and I parted ways three days ago is a little farther up the road, the front desk abandoned and not a single person in sight. I almost keep walking, not noticing until I'm around the corner that the back door is open and staticky strains of swing music are floating out into the dusty air. I'd told Sasha that I was running errands. The least I could do is go check on the car.

There's a beat-up old radio sitting on a workbench next to the door, the crackly, distorted music covering up the sound of the grit under my shoes when I edge inside. Three cars in a building that could probably hold ten, two trucks and the stolen model T pulled in the far corner. The only movement in the place comes from a pair of feet sticking out from underneath one of the trucks, tapping against the floor in time to the music. I've seen the shoes before, and the voice humming along with the melody line is familiar. Before I realize it, a little snort of a laugh rattles in my throat.

Jean's toes stop tapping, a metallic clunk rising through the air as he goes to slide himself out from under the vehicle. "Eren? You back already?"

I plant my foot against the edge of the rickety old glider he's lying on before the top half of his body can roll out, smirking and drumming my fingertips on the top of the truck's rusted-out tailgate. "Nope. You got two more guesses."

"Marco," he responds almost immediately, and there's a measure of satisfaction at how quickly he said it that I don't even try to deny. Biting back a victorious grin, I plant my foot on the glider and roll him the rest of the way out. Same messy hair and tawny eyes I remember from three days ago, same blue work shirt with his name on a patch, sleeves rolled up haphazardly. The only difference between then and now is that Jean's obviously been up to his elbows in motor oil for hours, smears of black all over his hands and up his arms and one stray little smudge along his cheekbone.

I blink a few times, swallow hard. Jesus. Don't know how much you've missed the game until you've been on the sidelines for three months.

"Good guess," I grin slyly down at him, leaning against the truck and waiting for him to get to his feet. "Been expecting me?"

"Well, I… you kinda… yeah, actually," Jean shrugs, wiping his hands on a grease-spotted towel hanging from his belt before raking fingers through his already mussed hair. "Since, y'know. I was supposed to see you about the car."

"You _were_ supposed to see me about the car," I nod, popping the tailgate on the truck and hopping up unceremoniously to sit on it. "I was downright dejected, sittin' there at the Springers waiting for you. Nothing to do but win sixty-three hands of poker and listen to Sasha yell at me about how I need to find Jesus and stop leading her husband down the slippery slope to damnation."

He barks out a laugh, jumps up on the tailgate beside me and leans against the other side. "Sounds like you got your hands full enough without me interfering, anyway."

"Hell, I'd pay you to interfere."

"Sounds like a better job than fixin' half-dead cars for ten hours a day. I'll take it."

"Too late now. I'm already here," I point out, nodding over at the Model T. "So what's the diagnosis?"

Jean grimaces, jumps back down to the floor and walks over to the car, from which he's very wisely removed the license plate. "Unfortunately, expensive. I don't know how hard you rode this thing, but the transmission is all kinds of screwed up. Gonna have to completely replace that, put in a new spark plug, and fix the exhaust valve before it's even somewhat fit to drive. The fact that I can fix it at all's the good news."

"And the bad news?"

"Well, I, uh…" Sucking in a breath through his teeth, he leans back against the side of the car and looks over at me with a nervous tension pulling tight at his shoulders. "It'll be a while before I can even touch it. I need parts for the repair, and we gotta wait for those to come in from Galveston."

"Galveston?!" I'm sitting up ramrod-straight in a second flat, jaw dropping.

"Yeah. So at least two weeks on that."

"The hell kind of auto shop has to ship in Model T parts from _Galveston?!_"

"We mostly work on trucks," Jean counters almost defensively, crossing his arms over his chest. "Production's down 'cause of the economy, not as many parts to be had. Other shops in town ain't gonna give us anything they got. Nearest supplier's in Galveston. Don't like it, go steal another car."

I grumble something about where the economy can shove its effect on the auto industry, standing up and reaching into my pocket for a smoke.

"Why don't you, though?" Jean asks, tilting his head to the side. "Steal another car, I mean."

Even despite my newfound foul mood, I have to laugh. "You're a piece of work, y'know that? Most people'd call the police, and you're here tellin' me to just go steal another car."

He just looks at me for a moment, lips pressing into a thin line, contemplative. "I don't even really know you. I can't judge you. I don't even know what all you did to wind up in prison in the first place."

I sidle over to him with the unlit cigarette dangling from my lips, a grin curling around the little cylinder and spreading ear to ear. "Oh, you know. A little armed robbery, a little auto theft, some breaking and entering. I'm a busy man."

Jean nods. "So why'd you do it?"

I open my mouth to answer him, but stop just short of formulating the words when I realize that no one's ever asked me that question before. Most people aren't all that interested in why I make a habit of robbing folks beyond whatever it takes to get me behind bars. All those months ago, the botched robbery and the handcuffs and the long drive to the courthouse, the long days staring at the wall of a cell, and no one ever bothered to ask me why. But Jean, he wants to know. He's standing there watching me like I'm some sort of puzzle with mismatched pieces, the gears in his head turning as he tries to figure me out, and I would have never thought that the word _why_ could feel so liberating.

"You know who Billy the Kid was?" I ask him, lighting the cigarette and stomping the match out under my shoe.

"'Course I know who Billy the Kid was, I didn't grow up under a rock," he snorts, tilting his head to the side. "He was an outlaw. Fastest gun in the Old West."

Smirking, I nod and exhale a thin stream of smoke. "Uh-huh. And you know who Pat Garrett was?"

"Can't say I do," Jean frowns, looking confused.

"He was the man who shot Billy the Kid," I tell him, taking a step closer, feeling out the new territory. If anything, he leans into it, hanging on every word. "Killed the greatest outlaw who ever lived, and no one knows his name. That's why I did it, nothing more, nothing less. Heroes never make the history books, Jean Kirschtein, and I certainly aim to."

He nods slowly after a minute, seeming to finally realize how close we are and taking a step back, turning around to frown at the defeated Model T. "And all of this is stopping you from stealing another car why?"

"Because I'm a fugitive, kid," I laugh, leaning on the front bumper. He's maintaining distance now, but that one moment where we drifted a little too close is all the indication I need. "Can't just steal another car because I don't wanna leave the law a trail to follow. They don't know if I'm in Dallas or Galveston or Timbuk-goddamn-tu, and keeping it that way makes it a hell of a lot easier to get out of here."

Jean walks over to the radio and starts fiddling with it, turning knobs until the music sounds a little less scratchy. With a melancholy little quirk of his lips, he looks down at the table and says, "I don't know anyone who ever got out of West Dallas."

"Well, you know me. I got plans."

"Everybody's got plans," he laughs, a bitter tinge to his voice that wasn't there before.

"No, everybody's got _dreams._" Pushing myself off the car, I cross over in front of him and sit on top of the workbench, skirting the edge of his personal space again as I smirk and flick the ash off the end of the cigarette. "I got _plans._"

Jean rolls his eyes and tries to reach around me to get to the radio again. "Yeah? And what're your _plans?_"

"Nobody'll be lookin' for me up around Ohio, Chicago, New York," I hum, counting off the places on my fingers. "And the real big players are up there. Capone, Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson. I run with them, I can make a name for myself. Just you wait. In ten years, you can tell all your friends that you met Marco Bodt back when he was small time and robbing gas stations for page-two write-ups."

I half-expect him to laugh at me. God knows Connie's done it enough for that to be considered the default reaction. But instead he just mutters, "I always wanted to see New York."

"That one of your dreams?" I grin, sliding off the edge of the workbench and nodding at our surroundings. "You know, the things you won't do 'cause you're too busy sittin' around here fixing up people's trucks and listening to godawful music?"

"It ain't godawful, it's _swing,_" Jean huffs, grabbing a wrench off the workbench and stalking back over to the truck he'd been working on when I came in. "And it don't matter. This is my life; this is what I get."

"Aw, come on, don't be like that." Laughing, I follow him across the garage, leaning over the other side of the truck's hood. "If you could do anything, money ain't an issue, obligations ain't an issue, what would you do?"

"Why does it matter-"

"Spit it out."

"It's stupid."

"_Jean."_

He flushes bright red, popping the hood up and jamming his arm down next to the engine. "Fine. Y'know how I told you I wasn't always poor, right? My family used to own this big department store downtown. We lost everything in the stock market crash, and then Dad died, and… well. Anyway, when I was younger I went to this private school in Dallas. Real nice, tuition was more than most people make in a year. We had a school band, and I started playing the trumpet when I was about eight. I was good at it. And I…" If it's even possible, his face goes even darker. Like he's compensating for his lack of composure, he grunts and rattles something around in the engine. "When I was a kid I always used to think that one day I was gonna go to New York and play in a big band. Y'know, with Benny Goodman or someone. Like I said, it's stupid."

Grumbling under his breath, he goes back to working on the car, not seeming to care that I'm still standing there watching him. The funny thing is that I can see him in some fancy school uniform with a big, dopey smile, toting a shiny new trumpet everywhere he went. Jean's fatalistic and grumpy, sure, but I saw a glimpse of that other person when he was with his mother and his little sister. He was happy once.

I wonder what that's like.

"You could do it, you know," I finally say.

"No I can't." He shakes his head sharply, yanking a burnt out spark plug out of the engine and scratching at his nose, leaving a little smudge of motor oil there. "I got Mom and Ninette. I'm the only source of income they have, Marco, okay? My mother's never worked a day in her life. If I wasn't here, they'd end up in one of those awful camps out by the railroad tracks; my sister'd be begging for scraps. I can't let that happen, and even if I could…"

"Ah, the 'and even if I could,' which translates to 'I secretly want to,'" I shoot back, still not willing to back down.

"And even if I could, I pawned my trumpet three months ago to pay the rent, okay?! Christ, just drop it!"

And he sounds so raw, so hurt, that I actually do. I think back to the line of people outside the pawn shop down the street, people trading all of life's tender little sentiments for the chance to put food on the table. Jean slapped a pawn ticket on his dream, and something about that is so goddamn sad that for a moment, I almost want to say I'm sorry for bringing it up. But then I remember that I never did know how to apologize, and I just nod slowly instead, dropping the smoldering remnants of my cigarette to the ground and sighing.

"You ever think of holding a up a few gas stations for rent money?" I ask after a long pause.

Jean throws his head back and _howls _with laughter_, _holding onto the front of the truck for support. "Me? Me. Robbing people. Can you honestly see me trying to hold up a store?"

"I think if you set your mind to it, you could do it," I tell him, shrugging and trying very steadfastly to push the image of Jean with a .45 in his hand smirking at some poor shmuck of a bank teller out of my head.

"Think I'll stick to fixin' cars, thanks," he shakes his head, still chuckling as he leans back down into the engine and rifles around a little more. "Speaking of which, I can't even touch that Model T until your services are paid in full. My boss has a rule about that."

"Well then it might be longer than two weeks on those repairs, because I'm flat broke," I huff, already cursing my luck under my breath. Maybe stealing another car would be easier. Not like I haven't done it before.

"Or you could just pay off the repairs by helping around the shop for a few weeks until the parts get here."

I raise an eyebrow at him, frowning a bit. "You got the kind of authority around here to make that kind of deal?"

"My boss has been my best friend since we were six, so if he complains I can always sock him in the jaw," he shrugs, looking up and smirking at me. He's got a dimple right above the corner of his mouth that cuts a little line through the smear of motor oil on his cheek when he smiles, and I'll be damned if it's not the most endearing thing I've ever seen. "You know anything about cars?"

"Enough," I grin, looking over at the useless hull of the Model T and seeing more possibility in it than I ever would have thought possible.

"Good," Jean says, slamming the hood of the truck shut and patting my shoulder as he walks past me, leaving a blackened handprint on my shirt. Sasha's going to be livid. I can't even describe how little I care. "You can start right now. Go get me that socket wrench. I gotta have both of these old rust buckets ready to roll by four."


	4. Chapter 4 - Jean

A week passes like an hour, and I suppose that's the difference a little company makes.

I'm used to having the garage to myself. Eren has a habit of being a lazy bastard and saying he's got paperwork to do when he's actually taking a nap at the front desk, and when he's not doing that he's banging around my workspace and tap dancing on my last nerve. That usually lasts a few minutes before I throw something at him and he clears out; so for the most part it's me, the radio, and long hours trying to bring dead vehicles back to life. A little frustrating, a little lonely, but it pays the bills.

It's different with Marco around. He knows his way around cars, helps me get my usual workload done twice as fast, and the place doesn't feel quite as dead with him whistling underneath the cars and telling awful jokes. Watching him, it's easy to forget the circumstances that brought him here. No one would ever expect a wanted man to be so... _nice,_ for lack of a better word. The impeccable manners and easy smiles he'd shown Mom and Ninette on that first day I met him seem to be a universal principle. Two days after starting work at the garage, he'd even charmed cranky old Mrs. Brzenska at the diner across the street to the point of her bringing us free food, an entire meal and a slice of apple pie each won on nothing but smiles and "yes, ma'am"s. I couldn't tell if it was some sort of witchcraft or just plain old skill.

Every customer he's dealt with since he's been here does nothing but sing the new guy's praises to Eren, who seems to be the one person in the entirety of West Dallas who doesn't think Marco Bodt is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Of course, Eren's pretty angry with the world in general, has been since we were kids, but the mood he's been in for the past week is a rare level of surly, probably something to do with the fact that I went behind his back in a manner that resulted in him not getting money.

I'm elbow-deep in the engine of a Dodge truck with starting problems while Eren's up in the front room dealing with customers, a middle-aged man in a flannel shirt and his wife who's actively gushing that "The new young man you've got working out there is a _doll,_ Eren, I hope you keep him around."

"Oh yeah, he's a real peach, ain't he." Eren grumbles, green eyes glaring daggers through the open door at us when Marco snickers as he hands me a wrench. "In fact, Jean hired him. I was never even consulted. I'm just so happy that my employees take initiative."

"Hey, Marco, is it just me or d'you got a funny taste in your mouth too?" I ask as soon as the bell in the front room chimes, signaling the customers' departure.

"Yeah, yeah, I do," he nods, sitting down on a glider slid halfway underneath a rusty Chrysler coupe and shooting Eren the brightest of smiles. "Tastes kinda bitter."

"Laugh it up, you two," Eren snaps, slamming the receipt book shut and raking a hand through messy, dark hair. "'Cause I think it's _real_ funny that we're already in the red and you had to go playin' charity and making promises you got no right to make, Jean. A goddamn riot."

"It's one missed sale. You seen how much faster our turnover rate is?" I shrug, waving my wrench around at the cars parked in the garage. "You're paying my usual wages and doing twice the business. Marco's more than paying for himself. F'you could stop being a Scrooge for ten seconds you might realize that this ain't too bad of a deal."

"Yeah, sure." Grumbling, Eren grabs his hat off the front desk and jams it angrily down onto his head, snatching up the receipt book and storming out into the garage. "God bless us, every fuckin' one. I'm headed down a couple blocks to talk to Mr. Fischer about financing the repairs on that truck. Stay busy, don't screw around, and I swear to God I'll pop you in the jaw if I come back and you're blastin' that damn radio again."

"Yessir," Marco nods, smiling serenely. Eren stalks out through the open garage door, and Marco waits five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen before chucking his wrench down on the concrete and walking over to flip the radio on with a smirk. "Smoke break?"

"I'll do you one better." Shooting him a grin, I slam the hood of the truck down and slip through the doorway into the front room. Under the desk is an old lunch pail filled with half-melted ice, four bottles of Budweiser bobbing up and down in the water. Watching out the window to make sure no one's looking, I grab two of them, kicking the door shut behind me as I walk back into the garage and hand one to Marco. "Eren says he can't do paperwork without drinking or he's liable to punch a wall. There's usually something up front if you know where to look."

Marco snorts out a laugh, knocking the bottle cap off against the edge of the workbench and raising his drink slightly in my direction. "To Eren Jaeger, then. For his good taste in business practices that almost makes up for his shitty taste in beer."

"I'll drink to that." I'm a little too afraid to break my bottle and look like an idiot trying to open it the way Marco did his, so I twist it off with the hem of my shirt over the cap before clinking it against his and taking a sip.

"Somethin' tells me that after working with that guy every day, you'd drink to just about anything."

"Nah, he's a good guy."

"Eren's a good guy and you got no issues helping a fugitive flee North. You sure got an interesting moral compass."

"I got no issues helping a fugitive flee North as long as he works to pay for his stolen car," I shrug, digging a cigarette out of my pocket and lighting it before continuing. "And the fact that Eren's a cranky, tight-fisted sonuvabitch don't mean that he ain't a good person."

He rolls his eyes a bit, hops up to sit on the cluttered surface of the workbench. "Whatever you say, compadre."

"Look." I don't know what it is about that one word, but there must be enough gravity in my voice for Marco to take me seriously, the smile fading from his lips when I breathe out a sigh and hop up to sit next to him, setting my beer off to the side and rolling the cigarette between my fingers. "My old man offed himself, okay? The family business went down like the fuckin' Titanic and he gambled away the savings we had left trying to get it back and the day after I turned sixteen he put a Colt revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger."

Marco just stares at me for a few seconds, blinking slowly. "Jesus."

It feels like a ball of lead just dropped straight into the hollow of my chest, memories tugging me back to Mom screaming, Nettie confused and crying, Police officers everywhere. And me. Just me. Me in the corner feeling like the world had imploded around me, not even enough space for grief under the weight of the fact that I was now the only thing standing between us and an even worse disaster. Two years later, and I still feel like I'm trying to claw my way out of the wreckage. Slow progress is still progress.

"Anyway, the day after the funeral, Eren showed up and offered me a job. His dad's a doctor in town. Remember my fancy private school? Eren and I went there together; he was a couple years ahead of me. But he wasn't exactly the doctoring type, so after graduation his dad floated him the money to get the garage started. Business here's usually so slow that he didn't really need the help, but he hired me anyway. He's a pain in the ass, but he's the only reason I can feed my mom and my sister, so yeah, in my opinion he's a good guy."

A long stretch of silence. Eventually, Marco nods stiffly, taking a long drink before setting his bottle down on top of a rusty toolbox and shoots me a sidelong glance. "No offense, but your old man sounds like a piece of shit."

"None taken," I shrug, taking one last drag off my smoke before hopping down from the workbench and grinding it out under my foot. "Not gonna disagree with you. What about you? Gotta be a reason you've been hell and gone from Telico for four years."

There's a flash of something across his face, but it's gone before I can see exactly what it is, replaces with a little quirk of a smile and a shake of his head. "Nah. My folks are good God-fearing people who're grateful for their simple lives."

"So why'd you take off, then?"

"I wasn't grateful for my simple life," he replies, and there's just the slightest flash in his eyes that warns me to leave it there.

And I do, because the bell in the front room chooses that exact second to ring.

"_Shit,_" I hiss, grabbing both the beer bottles and shoving them under the workbench while Marco reaches over much more calmly to turn the radio off.

"You that scared of Eren?" he asks.

"Whoever's up there ain't Eren." Shaking my head and grabbing for a wrench so I look busy. "Eren would've come back through the garage. It's either a customer or Mom coming to drop something off. Either way it won't look good if we're back here messin' around. I'll go see who it is; you… fix something."

He just sighs, grabbing the toolbox and going back to the car he'd been working on when Eren left. Cursing under my breath, I rake a hand through my hair and nudge open the door to the front room, expecting to see my mother with something I forgot back at the house but met instead with a taller, younger woman in a starched nurse's uniform, black hair pinned back neatly beneath her little white cap and dark, almond-shaped eyes glazing boredly over her surroundings.

"Mikasa. You should've come in through the garage. I 'bout had a heart attack," I laugh nervously, a big, dopey smile stretching lazily across my face.

"Eren fusses when I don't use the front door," she shrugs, holding up a little cloth-wrapped bundle as a response. "Besides, he left his change of clothes at home. I just came to drop them off. We've got a benefit dinner after y'all close up tonight."

"So he's gotta dress up tonight. That explains why he's in such a foul mood," I snort, leaning against the counter. "He just stepped out to go see a customer about payment issues, but you can bring that on back and put it in his locker for him."

She just hums her assent and follows me back into the garage, sidestepping the puddles of oil and dirt to save her white shoes from disaster. Marco re-emerges from beneath the Chrysler with a rattle, tilting his head to the side. "Not your mom, then?"

Mikasa fixes him with an even, analytical look, which is about as close to a warm first greeting as it's possible to get from her. "You're the new guy."

"Yup," he nods, beaming up at her like the scrutiny just rolls off his back. "Marco Bodt. Nice to meet you."

"Mikasa Ackerman." It's hard to tell if you haven't known her for as long as I have, but she softens a bit, the corner of her mouth giving the barest upward twitch. She skirts around the front of the car and goes over to the rusty lockers in the corner, shoving the bundle of clothes into Eren's before looking over her shoulder at me. "I'd stay, but I'm on break. I need to get back to the hospital so I can get off at five to get ready."

"You could always ditch that benefit-whatever and let me take you out for dinner instead," I blurt out before I can stop myself, dissolving into that dopey grin again while simultaneously wishing I could sink into the ground beneath me.

"Maybe some other time," she says, a little almost-laugh coloring her voice as she shuts Eren's locker and turns around. "I promised I'd be there. Besides, Ninette's birthday is next week, isn't it? You should buy her a present instead."

I know she doesn't mean it like that, but the insinuation that I couldn't afford to buy my little sister a birthday present _and _take Mikasa out on a date stings, mostly because it's true. I mumble out something along the lines of _yeah, you're right_, face red and hands shaking slightly as I head back to the workbench to pick up my tools again. She's right. Of course she is. The days where I wore a shirt twice before I outgrew it and threw away more food than I ate are long gone. Now it's working overtime for the mere possibility of getting Nettie a doll that isn't falling apart for her birthday. It's not the time to be thinking of anything else.

Marco seems to pick up on the discomfort left hanging in the air, slides his glider the rest of the way out from under the car and grabs the bumper to haul himself up. "So I'm guessin' you know Jean's family, right - agh, _dammit!_"

The rest of his question gets cut off by a pained groan as soon as he stands up, a hand pressed to his abdomen and his face knotted up in discomfort. He sways a little on his feet, darts out a hand to steady himself, and the action shows the red stain blooming outwards across the fabric of his shirt.

"Oh God, are you all right?" I rush out, running over and throwing his arm over my shoulder before he can lose his balance again. Despite how shaky Marco is on his feet, he feels solid, strongly-built and enough heavier than me that it's a little hard to keep him from falling over.

"M'fine," he mutters. He looks like he's about to pass out, hazel eyes glassy and a sheen of sweat clinging to his skin despite the fact that it's not all that hot in the shade of the garage.

"Get him into the front room. I've got some things in the car." Her shift at the hospital apparently forgotten, Mikasa goes rushing out into the lobby, the bell on the front door jingling in her wake.

Marco manages to move of his own accord across the garage and through the door, using me more for balance than anything else, but his normally tanned skin is pale as a sheet by the time he collapses into one of the chairs in the front room, freckles sticking out in sharp contrast. Breathing shallowly, another flash of pain skates across his face when he looks down at the mess his shirt's become. "Every time I think the damn thing's healed up…"

He doesn't have time to finish that thought, trailing off as Mikasa comes walking briskly back through the door with a massive first aid kit in tow, nurse mode fully engaged as she all but shoves me out of the way. I've seen her work, know how she gets, and I know she's what Marco needs far more than me right now.

Last year Ninette was climbing the dead tree in our back yard, fell off the top branch and broke her arm along with bruising herself blue all over and knocking her head hard enough on the ground that she saw double. We didn't even bother taking her to the hospital, just drove her over to the Jaeger's, partly because we knew she'd get better care there and partly because we couldn't afford to pay for a documented doctor's visit. Mikasa was the one who set her arm and made sure the concussion wasn't too bad. She does this thing where it seems like the world outside her and her patient doesn't even exist, like everything else is an afterthought and more than likely in the way.

That's how she is with Marco now, kneeling down in front of his chair and pressing the back of her hand to his forehead. "Burning up. Jean."

"Huh?" I jump a little, not thinking that she'd acknowledge someone outside her zone of focus.

"I know Eren's got that damned beer bucket behind the counter. Bring me the ice." The other two beer bottles roll off somewhere after I yank them out, but I don't take the time to notice where they went, watching as Mikasa pulls a handkerchief out of her purse and ties a handful of ice up in it before pressing it against the side of Marco's neck. "All right, shirt off and tell me what I'm dealing with."

"Buy me dinner first, dollface," he sputters out a thin little laugh before wincing again and reaching up to pop the first few buttons of his shirt. "Got cut a little over a week ago. It's just taking a while to heal up. I'll be fine."

Mikasa and I both suck in a breath through our teeth when he finally gets the shirt off, revealing a long, ragged cut down his midsection that's bleeding too much and looks far too inflamed to be over a week old. Mikasa's seen worse, but ever since I watched people scrubbing blood out of the floorboards of Dad's study I've never had the stomach for this sort of thing, eyes settling on the dip of Marco's collarbone so I don't have to look at the mess beneath, counting the freckles there and trying to swallow the metallic taste in my mouth. "Christ on a crutch."

"You two gonna stand there eyein' me up, or are we gonna patch this thing?"

"It's infected," Mikasa frowns, digging around in the first aid kit until she comes up with a bottle of iodine. "That's why it's not healing as fast as it should and why you've got that fever. Your lucky we caught it; at this rate it probably would've necrotized and you'd be in way deeper trouble than you are now. How did this even happen?"

Marco locks eyes with me over her shoulder, his voice perfectly even as he says, "I had a little accident mending a fence."

Yeah. Yeah, that's probably a better thing to tell her than 'I got injured busting out of jail.'

"Well, at any rate, we've got to clean this before it gets worse," she huffs, popping the top off the iodine bottle and flicking her gaze upwards to look at him. "How high is your pain tolerance?"

"Higher than you'd expect. Why?"

"Because this is gonna hurt," she shrugs, pouring a stream of the brown liquid directly onto the wound.

Marco manages to utter every single profanity I've heard in my life and a few I haven't in the space of about two seconds, his voice colliding with the backs of his clenched teeth and fists clenching in his lap. Mikasa doesn't even blink, dousing a wad of gauze in the stuff and blotting around the edges of the cut. The tidal wave of cursing fades into one long, pained hiss, Marco's eyes screwing shut as he stomps one foot repeatedly on the dusty floorboards.

"Almost done," she says, something soothing in the temperate lull of her voice while she finishes cleaning out the wound and pulls out a long roll of bandages, winding them around his waist in measured, practiced motions.

In response, Marco lets out a half-manic little cackle of a laugh, letting his head fall back and staring up at the ceiling. "Stings a little."

Looking at the whole scene still makes me feel queasy, so I swallow hard and duck around behind the chair, reaching for one of the discarded beer bottles that's rolled out into the lobby. I'm just starting to stand up when I actually get a closer look at Marco's back, the spray of freckles across broad shoulders not nearly as noticeable as the thick, jagged lines of raised white scar tissue cutting across from the nape of his neck all the way down to the waistline of his pants. It looks like some sort of wild animal mauled him. I think back to him telling Mikasa that he had a high pain tolerance and grimace.

"What in the hell happened to your back?" I ask, crossing back in front of the chair as soon as Mikasa's done bandaging him up.

If possible after the whole fiasco with getting the cut patched up, Marco's face goes even paler. But it's not pain I see skating across the planes of his face, not anymore. It's echoes of something, memories, and for once I don't even see a trace of his smirks and quick wit and smooth talk. There's only one thing in his eyes, resonating so deep that I can almost feel it secondhand.

Fear.

"Oh, that," he says too softly, trying for a smile but failing halfway. "I, uh… I got caught under a tractor."

It's the same look he gave Mikasa when he said he'd been fixing a fence.

"I've heard horror stories about things like that," Mikasa nods, packing up her kit and handing Marco his shirt back. "You see people come into the hospital who've had a real number done on 'em by farm equipment. Dangerous stuff."

"Yeah," he mutters, voice hollow and eyes seeming to be staring at something else even though he's looking right at me. "I should probably be dead, tell you the truth."

"Good thing you're not, or Jean would have to deal with Eren on his own," she says with a little smile, headed for the door. "All right, I've really got to go. Marco, you keep that clean and change the bandages once a day. No work until it's healed up. Take a few days and rest, all right?"

"Yes, ma'am. Much obliged." The smile comes to him this time, only faltering once Mikasa's out the door and he slumps back against the counter with a shaky breath. "Probably shouldn't've cussed so much in front of a lady, but god_damn_ that hurt."

"She's Eren's sister. She hears worse than that over the dinner table," I laugh, stashing the ice bucket back behind the counter and handing him one of the two remaining beers, which he drains half of in one gulp. "Sorry we don't have anything stronger. Got whiskey at home, but a lot of good that does now."

"Sister?" he frowns, wiping his mouth on the back of his arm and giving me a disbelieving look. "But she's Asian, ain't she?"

"Adopted sister, and she's half-Japanese, yeah. Her mother came over in 1912, married her dad and had Mikasa a couple years later. Her old man was pals with Dr. Jaeger, so when they both died in a car crash, I think it was… thirteen years ago? Anyway, the Jaegers took her in."

"Huh," he nods, slipping his shirt on with a wince but leaving it unbuttoned while he finishes his drink and watches me with an oddly analytical stare over the top of the bottle. "So is she your girl, or what?"

"I… what… she… God, no!" I sputter, grabbing the last beer for myself and musing that Eren can shove his complaining where the sun don't shine as I flush beet red and twist off the cap. "I mean, we've gone out around town a few times, but it ain't like we're going steady or nothing. Eren'd kill me, and I can't exactly afford a girl right now, y'know. I mean, I _wish,_ but… yeah."

"Uh-huh," Marco says, nodding slowly.

"Yeah," I mutter, feeling ten kinds of awkward as I start organising the papers on the front counter so I have something to do with my hands. The lobby gets very quiet for a few minutes, but I can still feel Marco watching me as I finish tidying up.

"You slept with her yet?" he asks suddenly.

"Jesus Christ, Marco!" I all but squeak, dropping a stack of folders.

"That's a no, then. You ever kiss her?"

"What the hell, man?!"

"Another no," he smirks, buttoning up his shirt and rolling his shoulders. "You ever kiss anyone?"

I lean down and pick up the folders, feeling like my face is about to melt off.

"Sweet sacks of shit, you _haven't_," he throws his head back and laughs.

"Shut up!"

"That's so fuckin' _adorable,_ Jean, Christ."

"I'll come over there and 'adorable' you here in a second," I grumble, tossing my armload of papers back onto the counter and glaring at him. "Over there actin' all high and mighty. You ever slept with a girl, then?"

"No, I have never in my life slept with a girl," he says with an impish grin leaning over the counter.

"Ever kissed a girl?"

"No I have not."

"Then why the _hell_," I hiss, leaning over the counter as well and whapping him upside the back of the head, "are you laughin' at me?!"

If anything, he only smiles wider. "No reason, I guess. Blame it on the pain. Makes me giddy."

"You're really damn strange, you know that?" I frown, not even noticing how close our proximity to each other was until I'm walking back into the garage.

"You have no idea," Marco says airily behind me, stopping in the doorway when he sees me yanking my stuff out of my locker. "Going somewhere?"

"Yeah, taking you back to the Springers. Mikasa said you had to rest, remember?"

"God Almighty, a convalescence in the Springer household," he groans, scrubbing a hand down the side of his face. "I don't know that I trust Sasha anywhere near an open wound. She'll pour arsenic on it instead of iodine and claim it was an accident."

"Well you could always stay with me," I reply before I even know what I'm saying, stopping short and staring at the pattern of rust on the front of my locker door.

Marco flashes the brightest grin I've ever seen on him and says, "I wouldn't want to impose."

"You said you're sleepin' on the couch at the Springers', right? That's nowhere to rest up if you're trying to heal," I rush out, not sure why I have to justify the offer, legitimize it in some way, _really _not sure why my cheeks feel hot again. "So come home with me. You can kip in my room for a couple days and I'll take the couch."

"Oh, I don't know," he all but drawls out, and it strikes me that this is some sort of game to him, seeing just how hard I'm willing to work to make this happen. It strikes me some time after that I'm not exactly sure why I'm working to make this happen at all.

"My mom's a great cook," I offer.

"Sold." Marco claps his hands and rubs them together with a victorious little smirk, walking over and leaning on me with a dramatic swooning motion. "Take me to my sickbed, Jean Kirschtein, I do believe I feel faint."

"Get off me, you goon," I scoff, landing a solid shove on his shoulderblade. I can feel the raised ripple of the wide scar there through the fabric of his shirt.

"All right, all right," he concedes, getting up and adjusting his newsboy cap on his head, leaving it a little crooked. "You blush a lot, y'know?"

"Shut up!"

He doesn't say anything until after I've locked up the garage and we're almost back to my house, drumming his fingers on the dashboard and looking aver at me for a few seconds before he finally asks, "So what are you gonna tell Eren? About me not being able to work for a few days, I mean."

"I'll tell him to take the repairs out of my paycheck if he's really that pissed about it," I shrug, shifting gears and squinting out through the dust cloud my truck is kicking up. "He won't do it. And if he does, he's an ass and oh well."

"That's…" he starts, looking out the window and pursing his lips.

"That's what?"

Marco lets out the same soft little laugh that matches his Cheshire Cat smile, turning back to me and shaking his head. "I think that's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me."

"I feel like you ain't exactly had much niceness in your life," I tell him, parking the truck out front and hopping down out of the driver's side.

"Not really," he shakes his head a genuine, warm smile settling on his lips as Ninette comes running out onto the porch with a happy squeal. "Not 'til now, at least."

Two years later and I'm still crawling out of the wreckage, but I finally feel like I've done something right.


	5. Chapter 5 - Marco

Stillness has never suited me. It's impossible to tell if it was the childhood of working if you wanted to eat or the adulthood of running if you wanted to live that made me that way, but regardless of how it came about, it never fails to feel like there's something uncomfortable crawling under my skin if I stay in the same place for too long. When I was eighteen I read a copy of Dante's _Divine Comedy_ that had been sitting in a suitcase I stole off the cargo car of a train. Pretty boring shit, honestly, but the one part that I still remember is the vivid descriptions of what happens to sinners trapped in their respective Circles of Hell, the macabre punishments and grotesquely poetic sentences for whatever crimes against God that they'd committed.

I don't know if I believe in God. I can't put too much stock behind someone that's got a whole nation praying every day for the means to provide for their families and still doesn't lift a damned finger. Maybe the punishment for my doubts on top of everything else I've done is to feel eternally restless.

I've never seen anything that can put down roots in a ground that's nothing but dust, anyway.

Still, it's not so bad at the Kirschteins', even if I've got a persistent prickle at the back of my neck, even if old instincts make me always take the seat closest to the door and sleep lightly. It's better than being the unwelcome stray that Connie dragged home with him. I don't feel hated here, and that's one thing of many I experience over the next week or so that hasn't happened to me in years. I can't remember the last time I spent so many nights in a row sleeping in a real bed, and the memories of going to sleep without a consistently growling stomach are even more distant than that. The sun rises, the sun sets, and I start to think that maybe I'm not doomed to being eternally unsettled after all.

Jean leaves before everyone else is awake most mornings, the engine of his truck turning over with a weary grumble what wakes me up more often than not. If he minds sleeping on the couch while I make up for entire years of missed rest underneath the hand-stitched quilt on his bed, he doesn't say anything about it. He gets up, leaves for work, and the day goes on. Ninette goes flying out of the house as soon as she can give her mother the slip, running barefoot up the road with blonde hair waving behind her like a battle banner, determined to soak up what's left of the summer. The sun gets hotter, the dust kicks up. I try to help out around the house until Mrs. Kirschtein fusses that I shouldn't be up moving around while I'm trying to heal, and I bite my tongue so I don't tell her that movement would be a mercy since it's about the only thing that can make the buzzing in my veins humming that I've been here too long go silent. Ninette blows back in on a cloud of dust sometime around the hottest part of the day, and a couple of times her mother catches a ride into town with a friend to run errands with my solemn vow to make sure that Nettie doesn't get into any trouble while she's gone. Jean comes home after dark, we all eat dinner, his mother and sister go to bed. We sit out on the front porch and have a few drinks and talk about nothing for a few hours. The moon rises, the moon sets, and it starts again.

I'm somewhere in the middle of the cycle when I bring my thoughts up to speed, sitting in the living room with Ninette and listening to the latest installment of _The Lone Ranger_ on the Kirschteins' ancient behemoth of a radio. The heat is so oppressive that my focus has been drifting in and out, a fuzzy blank somewhere in the middle of the broadcast. Mrs. Kirschtein is in the kitchen canning tomatoes, Nettie's sprawled out on her stomach in the middle of the floor with her feet kicking in a lazy flutter above her, and the Ranger and Tonto are in yet another tight spot that can only be solved with some unrealistically good sharpshooting.

"Hey, Marco," she says.

"Mm?"

"Who d'you think could win in a fight against the Lone Ranger?"

"In a shootout, you mean?" I mumble lazily, letting my head fall back on the top of the couch and grabbing a section of today's paper to fan myself with. "Billy the Kid."

"But Billy the Kid was an outlaw!" Ninette lets out an indignant squawk, sitting up and whipping around to look at me so fast that her hair puffs out into a messy golden cloud around her bony shoulders.

"He sure was," I shrug, looking over at her and feeling the corner of my mouth twitch into a smirk. "And there wasn't a man alive who could out-draw him."

"What about the man that shot him?"

I blink at her for a few seconds. "That's irrelevant."

"The Lone Ranger could so beat Billy The Kid," Ninette grins at me victoriously, her tongue poking through the gap between her two front teeth.

Letting out a half-offended little snort, I put down the newspaper and raise an eyebrow at her. "I don't believe he could, Miss Ninette."

"He could."

"He could not!"

"Could so!"

"Could not!"

"Ma!" she turns her head and hollers into the kitchen. "Who's better, the Lone Ranger or Billy the Kid?"

"I don't know, baby, but you need to turn the radio off and go get ready for Louise's birthday party," comes the weary reply over the hiss of boiling water, Mrs. Kirschtein's head poking into the living room after a beat. "The Wagners'll be here to pick us up any minute now."

"Aw, _Ma,_" Ninette whines, smacking her palm on the floor. "I don't even wanna go! Louise is a stuck-up little-"

"_Now,_ Ninette."

She flops over on her back with a drawn-out groan, looking up at the ceiling. "Can you braid my hair before we go? It's hot."

A series of bangs and glassy clinks serves as a response. "I'm a little busy here."

"Maaaaaa!"

"I can do it," I shrug, hopping up off the couch and throwing the newspaper down on the sunken cushions. From where I'm standing, I can see Mrs. Kirschtein turn around in the kitchen and tilt her head in my direction. Reaching up and scratching at the back of my head, I give her a smile and try not to make it as sad as it could be. "I got a little sister. I know how to do this stuff."

Ninette comes running over with a hairbrush, looking up at me with a crooked grin that looks exactly like her big brother's. "You got a sister? What's her name?"

"Maura." The name comes out softer than it should, experimental, like I'm trying to call up a ghost. A second passes, two, and I have to physically shake the memories off, painting on a happier expression as I flop back down on the couch and tug Ninette up onto my lap. "C'mere, little darlin', let's get that hair fixed."

"Marco and Maura. That's sweet," says Mrs. Kirschtein, walking out of the kitchen and wiping her hands on her apron.

"It's sweet until you hear what the rest of the kids' names are," I laugh, brushing the knots out of Ninette's hair and starting to wind it into a long braid down her back. "I'm second-to-youngest out of seven. Miles, Maddox, Matthew, Martin, Michael, Marco, and Maura. My folks had a thing for M's."

"Big family, huh?" she nods, running a hand through her hair. "I can't imagine wrangling seven. Two's more than I can handle."

"Well, you sorta needed seven kids to keep a farm up and runnin' smooth." Ninette hands me a faded ribbon as I finish up the braid, and I tie it into a tight bow, remembering holding a different little girl with a big smile and quick wit, thinking that maybe feeling like I was drowning every day might have been worth it for her sake right up until that option was taken from me.

They made my little sister go to my funeral. Connie saw her. Told me she cried like her world was breaking.

"A farm boy. I can tell by your manners," Mrs. Kirschtein chuckles, grabbing a hat and her purse off the coat rack by the front door. "City boys wouldn't compliment my awful cooking nearly as much."

"Yes, ma'am, from right outside Telico," I tell her, setting Nettie back on her feet. IT doesn't strike me for a few more seconds that I've told Jean's mother more about my past in a minute than I've told him or anyone else in four years. She's got a way of pulling things out of people before they even know what they're saying. I wonder fleetingly how Jean managed to get away with anything growing up.

"Well, your folks did a fine job raising you," she beams, walking over and patting my hair down into place. I can't remember the last time my own mother touched me with anything close to tenderness, and it's stupid, so stupid, but I feel this horrible tightness in my chest that doesn't fade even when she grabs Ninette's hand and heads for the front door. "I bet they're real proud."

"Yes, ma'am," I choke out. I used to be a good liar.

The sound of tires scrapes up the road outside, and Mrs. Kirschtein turns around in the doorway, giving me a little wave. "We'll be back this evening. You just rest now, all right? There are some leftovers on the counter if you get hungry."

I swallow hard and nod, holding my breath until the sound of the car fades into the distance.

The radio sputters and crackles, white noise, white noise, and I don't know how long I've even been sitting here on the couch by myself. The fever's been stubborn and hasn't been helped by the heat. Sometimes I lose myself, move around in a haze. Stillness has never suited me, and my skin crawls with every second that I sit there, but my limbs are lead and I can't move. Somewhere in the minutes or hours that have passed, the radio program has ended, replaced with distant, distorted swing music. My thoughts are sluggish, amorphous ribbons of memories I haven't touched in years mixing with Ninette's laughter and files on steel bars and the way Jean hums along to the radio when he works. My body can't move the way it wants, so now it's just my mind that's unsettled.

All the things I've done, all the charges I've racked up, but at least no one's ever accused me of being sane.

The screen door slams open with a sharp bang, jarring me out of my own head. I blink blearily, turning around and thinking that it can't already be time for Mrs. Kirschtein and Ninette to be back, but it's not either of them standing in the doorway. It's Jean, looking rumpled and completely terrified, work shirt half untucked and motor oil still smeared up his arms, eyes wide as dinner plates.

"Ain't you s'posed to be at work?" I mumble, kicking my feet up on the coffee table.

"Where are Mom and Ninette?" he says tightly, head snapping back and forth as he keeps looking out the door.

"Hm?"

Jean sucks in a sharp gasp of a breath, pulling a hand through his hair and biting back a string of curses. "Marco. _Where the hell are Mom and Ninette?!_"

My brain still doesn't want to work right, processing the rawness in his voice too slowly as I get up and shove my hands in my pockets, shrugging at him."Went to a birthday party for one of Nettie's school friends. Said they'd be back this evening."

"Shit," he hisses, pacing back and forth, eyes fixed outside the door before he slams his hand hard enough against the frame that I hear the wood crack. _"Shit!"_

"What's gotten into you?" I ask, walking over to him with a frown.

"That," Jean hisses, pointing out the screen door.

"Oh," I whisper. "Shit."

Out on the horizon, rapidly growing closer, there's a black cloud all the way from the sky to the ground. Dust storm. A bad one.

I can see the reflection of the storm's approach in Jean's eyes, the cloud stretching out across amber irises and darkening them as they harden and he grits his teeth, yanking the door open. "I'm going after them."

"The hell you are," I snort, pulling the door shut. "That storm'll be here in five minutes. Ain't no way you can beat it."

He's not even listening, trying to shove my arm out of the way and get to the door again. "Move."

"So you can get yourself killed? I'll pass."

I'm still peaky and off-balance from what's left of the fever, and Jean uses that to his advantage, landing a solid push against my shoulder that sends me stumbling out of the way. Seething, he grabs a threadbare jacket off the coat rack and grabs a set of car keys from his jeans pocket, glaring at me like I'm the bad guy here as he yanks the door open again. "My mom and sister are out there, you can't expect me to-"

"Dammit, Jean, _listen._" My hands knot up in the lapels of his shirt, yanking him back inside and spinning him around until his back hits the wall hard. For the first time since he came in the house, he pauses. I don't even realize how close we are until I'm inhaling the shaky breath he lets out, until I can see the dust motes caught in his eyelashes.

Funny. The thought that he's beautiful hits me simultaneously with the thought that he's a complete idiot.

"Listen," I say again, softer, although I still don't back up enough to give him the chance to dive out the door. "They're _fine._ They left ages ago. Right now they're in someone's house. They're safe. And you ain't doing anyone a lick of good by runnin' out into a duster like that for no good reason. Now sit down, have a drink, and get your fool head on straight while I go lock up. We're gonna be here awhile."

A few seconds pass, and he swallows, Adam's apple bobbing sharply along the column of his throat before he nods. My hands relax in the fabric of his shirt, settling briefly on his shoulders before I let him go and set about making sure all the shutters are closed, wet towels shoved under the seam of the door and the windows. It's dark as midnight outside by the time I'm done, the ominous scrape of dust against the house mixing with the howl of the wind. The radio is nothing but static. I flip it off with a sigh and wonder if this is part of my eternal damnation too.

Jean's curled in on himself in one of the rickety kitchen chairs with a death grip on a generously-poured whiskey, the tremors shooting down his arm making the amber liquid slosh around in the glass. He's three gulps in before he deems himself capable of speaking to me, gesturing sharply at an empty glass in front of the chair next to him. "Went up to the front room to get some paperwork and saw it comin' in. Eren closed up the shop, told me I should go home, check on Mom and Nettie. When I came back and they weren't here…"

"You blew your wig and were ready to go on a suicide mission when they're safe and sound at a birthday party, yeah, I noticed," I reply drily, pouring myself a drink and sitting down. "You okay?"

"Yeah, just… just gimme a minute." Eventually, his breaths come a little easier and the shaking dies down, less fear and more fatigue on his face when he looks up at me. "Thanks, Marco."

"What, for throwing you up against a wall like something out of a trashy romance novel? Anytime," I smirk, the fact that he's drunk and I plan to be soon making me a little braver than I probably should be.

It's hard to tell with how dark it is, but I could swear that Jean's face turns an impressive shade of red. He sputters for a second before managing to laugh and say, "For stopping me, I mean. I wasn't… Didn't have my head in the right place."

"Yeah, well, when you do armed robbery for a living you learn to assess the danger of situations pretty quick," I shrug, knocking back half my drink and grimacing against the burn working its way down my throat.

Jean shakes his head and whispers, "God, I keep forgetting that."

"Forgetting what?"

He leans forward, elbows on the table and chin perched on the heel of his hands as he watches me carefully. "That you're a criminal."

"I prefer the term 'outlaw.' Has a nicer ring to it." Grinning, I mirror his movement and lean across the table as well. "And you're harboring a fugitive, Jean Kirschtein, which makes you an outlaw too."

"Guess I am," he says with this cocky little smirk that's about seventeen times more attractive than it has any right to be, finishing off his drink, and I _do not_ pay attention to the way the alcohol clings to his lips in a bittersweet veneer, I _do not _entertain detailed mental images of kissing it off, I _do not_ try to do some quick math to figure out just how much weight the kitchen table could hold.

Christ, I don't like the person I am when I drink whiskey. Logic goes out the window and I try to fuck everything with pretty eyes and a magnetic smile.

"So when's the last time you actually cleaned that thing?" Jean asks after a minute, pointing at my chest and the flash of bandages visible under the first few buttons of my shirt I popped open to deal with the heat after the girls left.

I frown, count on my fingers. "Three days?"

"Dammit, Marco, you wanna get gangrene or some shit?!"

"I can't help it!" I lash back defensively, crossing my arms and wincing at the motion. "I chicken out every time I try. That iodine hurts like a sonuvabitch."

"Oh for God's sakes," he rolls his eyes, jumping up and walking back the hall to the bathroom, returning a few seconds later with a handful of gauze and a bottle of iodine. "If you're gonna be a baby about it, I'll do it."

"You're drunk, kid."

"And _you're _gonna have a nasty festering wound unless someone takes care of it," he huffs, dumping the stuff on the table and rolling up his sleeves before going to wash the motor oil off his hands in the kitchen sink. "So either go do it yourself or shut up and take your shirt off."

I rest my chin in my hand and sigh wistfully. "If I had a nickel for every time I've been given that ultimatum…"

"Don't be a smart-ass," Jean snaps, soaking a wad of gauze brown with iodine and looking at me expectantly. Grumbling, I shell off my shirt and peel the bandages back, letting out a little hiss. It's easy to forget how much the cut hurts until I'm trying to clean it. The stupid thing doesn't even look that much better than it did a week ago, still healing slowly. Jean sucks in a breath and blinks hurriedly for a few seconds, pressing the hand that isn't holding the gauze against my forehead. "And you still got that fever, too."

"I'll be all right - agh!" I start, cut off by him pressing the gauze against the cut without warning, the iodine feeling like liquid fire where it touches the injured skin. On instinct, I go to jump forward, out of the chair and away from the pain, but Jean presses his free hand to my chest to keep me in my seat, fingers settling like puzzle pieces in the valleys between my ribs.

He doesn't have hands that were meant to work on cars and haul boxes. They're more elegant than that, slender palms and spindly, almost delicate fingers, fragile-looking but definitely dextrous and strong enough to keep me in place as he keeps dabbing at the cut. Musician's hands. I think back to his story of his trumpet sitting on a pawnshop shelf and feel suddenly sad.

"Just hold still," he mutters, frowning in concentration. He gets this little furrow between his eyebrows when he's thinking too hard about something, and you can almost see the tunnel-vision, his entire attention spiraling inward to the task at hand. I've seen him look at cars in the shop like that a few times, but being the subject of that scrutiny makes something hot and corrosive sink in the pit of my stomach, sparking out through my limbs. I tell myself that the deep breaths I'm pulling in are to combat the pain. A few more spikes of discomfort, and then Jean looks up at me with a little twitch of a smile. "There. All done."

He doesn't make any effort to move. I'm sure as hell not complaining. "Y'know, I think I like you better than your nurse friend."

"Bah. I ain't nearly as good at this stuff as Mikasa is." Shaking his head, Jean finally stands up to clear off the table. Maybe it's the booze and the fever making me hypersensitive, but I swear I can feel the drag of every fingertip along my ribs as he pulls his hand away. "You can put new bandages on yourself. I ain't coddling you to that extent."

The next few hours pass with me winding another stretch of bandages around my waist, the dust storm raging outside, and the two of us getting far more drunk than is wise or prudent. Jean's a happy drunk, a talkative drunk, and I'm content to just sit back and watch him laugh as he goes off on tangents about his little sister and work and a whole compendium of embarrassing stories about Eren. That little dimple on his cheek that carves a curve into the plane of his face when he smiles is much more interesting than anything he's telling me, but I smile and nod along, throwing in a word edgewise every once in a while.

I don't even realize for the longest time that I've been staying in the same place for hours, and not a single instinct is screaming at me to move.

Eventually we run out of whiskey and get up to stumble into the hallway, laughing like a pair of fools and using the furniture and each other for support. Jean's markedly more intoxicated than I am, trips halfway back the hall and falls against the wall, tugging me with him.

"You okay, kid?" I laugh, holding him upright while he howls like I've just told him the funniest joke in history.

"I'm _fine,_ I'm… hey." He goes from laughing to dead serious in a second flat, scowling and poking my shoulder with one bony finger. "Hey. Don't call me a kid. I'm eighteen, I'm an adult."

"All right, all right, don't get testy." He frowns even more, and the expression is so goddamned adorable that I can't stop myself from grinning, swaying on my feet and accidentally-on-purpose leaning into him. To my (admittedly compromised) mind, I'm in the clear. I've been testing the waters for weeks now, playing it even more carefully than I usually do, and I've gotten nothing but positive responses. No time like the present, right?

I really, really hate the person I am when I drink whiskey.

"Just don't want you to look at me like I'm some dumb kid," Jean says, all trace of slurring gone from his voice as it drops a half octave. There's still the brightness from the alcohol in his eyes, but there's something else, too, a dark flash that tugs his pupils wider as they flick down and up again.

"Trust me, the way I'm lookin' at you sure as hell ain't like you're some dumb kid," I hum, leaning in closer. Our noses brush, and I swear to God I feel like a lightning bolt's gone down my spine.

Jean gulps in a breath, blinks a few times. Disentangles himself from between me and the wall and hops back almost like he's been burned. "I, uh… I'm gonna go lay down? Yeah. And you… you should go rest. Your bandages. And stuff."

"Yeah."

God_dammit._

I wait until I make sure that he gets to the couch safely before continuing back the hallway, ducking into the bathroom instead of Jean's room despite a bed sounding wonderful to my dizzy head. The mirror over the sink is cracked, distorting my reflection as I splash a handful of cold water on my face and shake my head slowly back and forth.

"You're in deep, you idiot," I whisper to the fractured version of myself staring back at me. "You're in _so_ fuckin' deep."

And strangely enough, I don't mind it as much as I probably should. Stillness has never suited me, and yet the thought spins across my brain as I'm lying in Jean Kirschtein's bed drunk off my ass with the smell of him clinging to the pillowcases that I've never been so happy to be the calm in the middle of the storm before.


	6. Chapter 6 - Jean

I fall asleep praying that I'm drunk enough to forget everything that happened from the moment I came back into my house with a dust storm on my tail, and only find that fate has it out for me. I'm not drunk enough to forget, but I'm exactly drunk enough to dream about it through the endless, fuzzy hours as the alcohol works its way out of my body.

It's like a slow-motion replay, a running loop of my back against the wall, the hazel flash of Marco's eyes, his breath painting itself in a warm wash across my lips. Ceaseless repetitions of the little smirk he gave me in the kitchen, of bandages and iodine bottles, and I swear after having my subconscious hounding me with drunken memories for what seems like an eternity, I could probably point out every freckle between his collarbone and waistband by memory alone. I dream of drunken laughter and stumbling feet and the feeling of being too close but not close enough. I dream so deep and so vivid that I start to wonder if any of it happened at all, if I'll just wake up under a car in the garage with Eren grumbling that he's not paying me to catch up on my beauty sleep.

But then I wake up to sunlight streaming through the shutters on the living room window and a screaming hangover headache, and the reality settles cold in my gut despite the heavy heat winding its way through the house. It was all far too real.

Panic claws up my throat with razored talons, eyes screwed shut like if I don't open them I won't have to acknowledge anything. Won't have to acknowledge how (surprise, surprise) I screwed up.

Maybe in some places times are changing, maybe you hear about big cities up North where _those people_ - that's the terminology Dad always used, and I can still hear the venom in his long-gone voice - can live life reasonably quietly, tight-knit little communities in urban neighborhoods that the rest of the world glosses over. But this is Texas in nineteen-thirty-fucking-four, and nothing here has changed for the better since the days when saying something contrary to the Good Book meant a lynch mob coming after you. Hell, the only one of _those people_ I've ever even heard of living in Dallas was some guy that worked for one of Dad's partner companies, and the whole thing blew up into a massive scandal. We heard a few weeks later that he'd packed up and moved out of state, but I don't think I ever quite believed it, nine years old and facing down the harrowing truth about what happens to people here that step out of line.

I did what I was supposed to do. I looked out for my family's best interests, like a good son. Nine years old and feeling an invisible noose tightening around my neck, I took the truth and stomped it down, shoved it into the deepest part of my chest and locked it up so tightly that no one including me could touch it. I lived my life, my life came crashing down around me, but that little box of secrets stayed shut tight for nine years, and even if it was only to myself in the darkest part of the night, that accomplishment was something I could be proud of.

Or at least it was until a bottle of sub-par whiskey and a fugitive with a blank-slate past and a Cheshire Cat smile shot it all to hell. I think back to the dreams draining away like water through my fingers, and that's all I can remember, the cloying taste of alcohol and the curve of Marco's grin and something that had to have been unadulterated want curling in the pit of my stomach.

God help me.

My eyes snap open. Nothing to do now but pick up the pieces, realize my lapse and learn from it. I roll off the couch with a soft groan, my head throbbing in time with my heartbeat and a faint, repetitive sushing noise from the kitchen. When I peek through the doorway, Mom is sweeping thin lines of dust out into the hallway, immaculate in her threadbare dress and looking the picture of control. I'm across the room and hugging her tightly before I even have time to process that I've moved at all, sucking in a ragged breath. "Thank God, you're okay."

The broom falls to the kitchen floor with a clatter and she hugs me back with a soft smile, a hand coming up to smooth my messy hair down. "Of course I am. I got more bluster in me than one of those dust storms any day."

"Nettie?" I ask, pulling back and taking a quick look around the kitchen.

"Outside sweeping off the porch. We were getting ready to leave the party when the storm rolled in, ended up staying the night at Louise's house. Don't look so worried, Jean, everything turned out alright."

But I have to worry, because worrying makes it easier. If I worry, I don't have space to think about anything else. It's easier for me to nod and whirl around and run outside, refusing to calm down until I see my little sister with my own eyes, her long blonde braid thumping rhythmically against her back as she goes at the sinking floorboards of the porch with a broom like the house has personally wronged her. It's easier to feel the ache of the wood colliding with my knees as I kneel down and yank her into my arms, holding her until she squirms and laughs and tells me to let go before I give her cooties.

"I'm your big brother. You can catch cooties from little punks like that Wagner kid, but not me," I snort, ruffling the top of her head until spun-gold strands of hair escape from her braid. "I was worried sick about you, alright, you can live through one stinkin' hug."

"Miss Ninette, would you be so kind as to come help me out with these windowsills?" The voice comes from around the front corner of the house, smooth baritone, and it's too late for me to retreat back into the house, it's too late, I can't even move, rooted to the porch and wishing I was still asleep. Marco rounds the corner and hops up onto the porch, throwing a dusty hand towel over his shoulder with one hand while pulling a cigarette out of his pocket with the other. He's washed up and changed since last night, a fresh shirt and that damned newsboy cap sitting crooked on his head, the smell of aftershave wafting through the smoke when he lights the cigarette and looks up at me with a soft smile. "Oh, hey there. I told your mom to let you sleep. You were pretty tuckered out last night."

I screwed up. I screwed up so badly that I can't even fathom it.

"I, uh…" I croak, choking on dust and my heart hammering in my throat as I look at my shoes, at Ninette wiping off the window, at anything except his lips and the could-have-been's that still cling to them. There's no possibility of escape, and I've resigned myself to dying of shame here and now when my hand brushes the car keys still in my pocket and my chance at redemption explodes in my head like a grenade. "I, uh… I gotta go. Check on something. At the shop."

"It's your day off," Marco frowns, and God, how can he stand there looking like nothing's wrong? Maybe he got to drunk to remember anything. I start praying with every fiber of my soul that he got too drunk to remember anything.

"I know, I just, uh… I'll be back."

Time jumps, and I'm in the truck headed up the road, faster than I should be driving in my efforts to outrun the clamor rising in my head. I'm miles away from the house before I can finally think straight, a wave of calm washing over me as the engine rattles up through the steering wheel and numbs my hands. I've done this before. Hell, I've done it as a little kid who barely understood the meaning of what he was suppressing. So my little box of secrets got knocked open. There's a way to fix that.

Stomp it down. Lock it up. Remind myself of who I am.

Who I have to be.

I don't go into downtown Dallas that often. It's a waste of gas, and besides, the memories of my old life hand a little too heavily around the place for it to be comfortable. I drive past my old school and swear I can see myself walking home with the boys from my class, shoving each other back and forth and yanking our ties off the second we got out the door. My route doesn't take me past my old house, but I can see the roof jutting over the buildings in the distance, and that's more than close enough. As devastated as I was to lose everything else, I was more than willing to leave that place. They could never really get the bloodstains out of the floor.

The hospital is as overcrowded and busy as usual, but I manage to snag a place to park on the street, shutting the truck's engine off with a weary rattle and hopping out into a narrow miss with oncoming traffic. Jittery and breathless, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the windshield. Hollow-eyed, face drawn up in anxiety, still in my work clothes from yesterday, messy hair and a day's stubble. I was passed out for God knows how long, and I look like I haven't slept in a week. I feel like I'll never sleep again.

This is my consequence. This is my penance for skirting too close to something I should have stayed away from. This is what he reduces me to.

I shake the thought out of my head and duck through the front door of the hospital, skirting around the lines of people waiting to be cared for, children and adults alike coughing up mouthfuls of dust and suffering from the one thing doctors can't treat - starvation. There's a staircase off one of the back hallways, and I vault up the steps two at a time, emerging on the second floor and snapping my head back and forth. I haven't been here since Ninette was born. The maternity ward's to the left, which means if I head right…

"Jean?"

I nearly jump out of my skin, whipping around to the source of the voice. Starched uniform. Black hair. Eyes like solid onyx.

This is who I am. This is who I have to be.

"Jean," Mikasa repeats herself, frowning and walking over to me. She takes a quick glance down the hall, checking to make sure no one's around before she reaches up and presses a cool hand to the side of my face, brows knitting together in concern. "Hey. Look at me. Are you alright? Did something happen to your mom? Ninette?"

"They're fine," I choke, closing a hand around her wrist as gently as I can in my panicked state and leading her down the hallway. "Just come with me for a second."

She follows, and her voice is just as unflappably calm as ever when she speaks again, but the hand that comes up to rest on my arm speaks volumes for how unsettled both of us are. Mikasa doesn't do comfort. If she feels the need to comfort you, you're the kind of mess that's already beyond repair. "You're worrying me. Just tell me what's going on."

There's a broom closet about halfway back to the stairs, the door unlocked when I try it. Muttering something unintelligible under my breath, I pull Mikasa in after me, watching the shadows on her face shifting in time with the swinging lightbulb over our heads. I can't talk, can't breathe, can't think. My hands shake visibly when they come up to frame her face, and she presses her own steady palms over them to still the tremors, thumbs brushing over the ridges and valleys of my knuckles, and this, here, with her, this is who I am.

"Jean," she says again, and the lilt of her voice is different, deeper.

I look at the half-confused frown still clinging to the corners of her mouth, and even though the rest of him is far away, all I can see is Marco's smile.

I dart down across the height difference and press my lips to Mikasa's hard enough to bruise.

This is who I have to be.

She tenses for a moment, caught off guard, and I come to my senses enough to start to pull back, sinking further into the long internal scream that's berating me for thoroughly wrecking every aspect of my life. The last thing I expect her to do is tug me back in with this contented sigh that sounds completely wrong for her, fingers lacing back through the unholy mess of my hair in soothing little motions.

This has been coming for years. Everyone has been waiting for this. This is who I am. Who we are.

"Go steady with me." My voice sounds broken when we part, pathetic, imploring. "I know that I've got my family to worry about and that your brother's gonna kick my ass and that you've got your job, okay, I _know,_ Mikasa, but we can make it work. It has to work."

I don't tell her why it has to work. She doesn't need to know the kind of convoluted shit that's raging inside my brain. If there's anyone capable of cleansing me of my own ruination, it's her.

I half-expect her to shove me off and tell me to keep dreaming. Instead, she nods and strokes along my jawline and says, "All right. All right, I will, we will, Jean, just _breathe._"

And I do. _All right._ I'm safe. I can practically hear a lock click as some of the panic shrinks back into my chest. "So, this is… we're… you're my girl now?"

"Guess I am. Figure everyone's just been waitin' on us to get the timing figured out, huh?" The little flash of a smile she shoots up at me makes my chest ache, such a rare thing on her face that I feel like I've just been given a gift I don't come close to deserving. "But why now? Why'd you come running in here looking like you've seen a ghost all for this?"

"Because…" I start, trying to figure out how to dance around the details. "I feel like Alice."

Mikasa frowns. "What?"

"I feel like Alice. I've been stuck down a fuckin' rabbit hole with all kinds of hell, and I'm just trying to get home." That's it. That's the truth. And looking at her, I can almost see the light above me, my one last shot to get out of this convoluted Wonderland for good.

My time for having dreams is over. I can only aspire to normalcy now, and I can't even do that on my own.

"I know how hard it's been on you since your dad," she says solemnly, and I have to bite back a manic, humorless laugh. My dad's about as far from the problem as he can get. But Mikasa doesn't need to know that. No one does. It's better for everyone involved to think that the state I'm in is the result of grief arriving years too late.

"Yeah. Yeah, and I just…" I suck in another shaky breath, twining my arms around her waist and burying my face in her hair, inhaling the smell of water lilies and hairspray. "I want a _life._ I'm tired of feeling like the next big gust of wind is gonna blow me off to God-knows-where. I want a life and I got no idea where to start."

"You could start by kissing me again like you did just now."

I do, hoping that it will make me feel more grounded.

"That was nice," Mikasa hums after I pull back again, reaching up to adjust the little white cap on her head and looking up at me.

"Yeah. It was," I nod, still a little shell-shocked.

She huffs and shakes her head, goes up on tiptoe to ghost her lips across my cheek. "Go home and rest. I'll see you around, okay?"

By the time I manage a numb nod and a "Yeah, okay," she's already out the door and halfway up the hall.

I manage to bite the panic back until I get out of the hospital and back to my truck, leaning forward in the driver's seat and feeling horror stab at the lining of my chest again.

Kissing Mikasa was nice. I liked it. It was something I could get used to. But her lips on mine weren't nearly as nice as being two inches and some bad life choices away from Marco Bodt's, and that realization is so viscerally terrifying that instead of dealing with it, I shut down. Start the truck. Pull off into the street, drive away.

Stomp it down. Lock it up.

I stop by the garage mainly because I'm in no state to go home, telling myself that the beating I get from Eren won't be as bad if he hears the news from me before he hears it from Mikasa. He's in the garage tinkering around under the hood of a Model A when I walk in, frowning as he looks up at me. "You look like hell."

"Eren, listen," I start, shifting nervously and trying to remember the best way to dodge his right hook. "I-"

"Jean!" The door to the front room slams open, and Marco comes breezing into the garage.

I feel like the world has fallen out from beneath my feet.

"Well, ring-a-ding-ding, ain't this a fuckin' party," Eren grouses, glaring back and forth between the two of us. "Did you two goons come here to help out, or just to be a pain in my ass?"

"I came here lookin' for him," says Marco, pointing at me and looking confused. "He ran out of his house like a bat out of hell saying he had to come here and check on something."

Eren blinks, frowning more deeply in confusion. "What would you need to check on here? It's your day off."

"I, uh…" I scramble for a lie, looking frantically back and forth between them. "I thought I left my wallet in my locker. I was gonna go shop for Ninette's birthday present, so I needed money, couldn't find my wallet. Turned out to be in the floor of the truck. Not an issue."

Eren shrugs and goes back to working on the car, but Marco gives me a look that defines skepticism, meandering around the Model A's front bumper and pursing his lips. "All right. I'll just stick with you then. I hitched a ride into town and got no way back to your place. We might as well go run around together."

God, take me now. Just get it over with and strike me down.

I couldn't get that lucky. I just sit there stammering for a second before Eren whirls around and snaps, "Well whatever you two are gonna do, get the hell outta my garage. I got a business to run here, not a social club."

Marco waits until we're back outside to say what he'd been biting back in the garage, grabbing me by the elbow and tugging me down the narrow alley between the front room and the closed tailor's shop next door. "All right, what the hell's gotten into you?"

_You!_ I want to scream, caught between wanting to punch him and wanting to do something far more horrifying, fists clenching up at my sides as I fight to refrain from either. _You're what's gotten into me with your stupid smile and your big outlaw plans and how you look at me like I'm not just another half-dead charity case in this shithole town, you, you, you-_

"Nothing," I tell him, my face as impassive as I can make it. "I was still a little drunk when I got up this morning, felt a little loopy. Hell, I don't even remember what happened last night after I got home."

"You don't?" he asks, and I am so beyond delusional for letting myself think he sounds a little wounded.

"Nah. It all blurs out after I helped you with those bandages," I lie, pointing at the flash of white beneath his shirt collar and shrugging.

Marco nods a little stiffly, walks back out into the street with his hands jammed in his pockets. "So. Ninette's present."

"Oh, uh, yeah." Sputtering, I jog to catch up with him, darting across the street. "Figured we'd just go to the pawnshop. They got nice stuff in there that ain't too awfully expensive. Nettie's easy to shop for. Little girls like dolls, right?"

"Get her a baseball mitt," Marco says. I laugh, and he looks over at me, an eyebrow raising. "I mean it. When's the last time you saw her with a doll? You wanna know what she does when you're at work every day? She goes down the street and plays sandlot baseball with the Reebs boys and that little Wagner brat and a couple of the Zerumskis. Jean, I ain't shittin' you, that little girl can pitch a better fastball than any of 'em. I watched a game the other day, I swear on my life, the kid throws like the fuckin' Bambino. You want her to appreciate her birthday present? Get her a ball and a mitt."

"My mom would skin me alive."

He stops short right outside the pawnshop door, turns around and looks me dead in the eye. "Life's too short to waste it messin' around with a bunch of shit that don't make you happy, Jean. Everyone in your family deserves to be happy. Y'all should start taking steps to make it happen."

God, why do I feel like he's not talking about Ninette?

"Alright, alright, I'll get her a ball and a mitt," I snort, yanking the door open and ducking inside. Of course he was talking about Ninette. Of course he was.

The pawnshop is jam-packed full of people, and the shelves are all but overflowing. There's no real organization to the place, so I have to just start from the very first shelf, combing down the aisles and seeing if there's anything I could grab that would work for a birthday gift. Plenty of jewelry, gold chains and wedding rings and fancy pocket watches. Some nice china, a few antique porcelain figurines, little silver filigree napkin rings.

"Hey, look here!" Marco pipes up behind me, running over with a little, careworn ukulele in his hand. Grinning like a kid at Christmas, he strums a few chords and nods to himself. "Nice sound. I'm gettin' this."

"You're broke," I point out.

"So?"

"Marco, _no,_" I hiss, snatching the ukulele out of his hand.

"Marco, _yes,_" he retorts, grabbing it back and wandering down the aisle strumming the chords and humming the melody to 'I've Got The World On A String.' I roll my eyes and go to take the damned thing again, but he dances out of my way with a laugh and an infuriatingly cheeky wink. "There's a baseball mitt over there, by the way."

Grumbling a string of vague insults, I walk over to the shelf he nods at, pulling the reasonably new-looking baseball mitt off the shelf. It's made for a kid, small enough to fit Nettie's hand, and little-used enough that she can break it in herself. Nodding my approval, I turn around to head for the counter but get stopped short in my tracks.

When Marco finds his way over to me again, he's got the ukulele in hand and a ridiculously feathery woman's hat perched over his newsboy cap. "What's eatin' you, kid?"

"I told you not to call me a kid. It's nothing," I shake my head, starting to walk away, but he follows my line of sight up to the top shelf, his smile dying when he sees the painstakingly polished brass Martin trumpet sitting there like a crowning achievement. I swallow hard, take another few steps, but I can't make myself turn my back on it.

"That yours?" he asks.

"It used to be," I reply softly, almost feeling a physical ache when I force myself to look away and walk back to the counter. "Come on. It's stuffy in here, I wanna get this thing and get out."

Marco goes to put his own findings back while I'm waiting in line, sauntering over once I'm up to the front and leaning on the counter as the pawnbroker picks up the ball and mitt and looks them over. "That'll be a buck even, son."

"You're _joking,_" I gape, looking back and forth between him and the merchandise. "A dollar. For a baseball mitt."

"That's business, kid. Take it or leave it."

Fuming, I go to reach in my pocket for my wallet, only to find that it's empty. Did I actually leave it in the truck? "Hold on, I gotta-"

"No you don't," Marco cuts me off, pulling a wallet from his pocket. Mine. "You didn't go to the garage to get your wallet, and you didn't leave it in your truck, because you ran off and left it sittin' on the kitchen table. I don't know why you left or what you did today, Jean, but I'm gonna go ahead and tell you right now that it ain't in your best interests to bullshit a bullshitter. I haven't met a man who can out-lie me yet."

I can't even bring myself to say anything, just grab the wallet from him and slap a dollar bill on the counter before scooping up the baseball and mitt and making a beeline for the door. It's the kind of situation that would usually make Marco annoyingly pleased with himself, but now he just looks pensive and almost sad, following me back across the street to the truck and not saying a word until we're a good ways up the road.

"A dollar for a baseball mitt is highway robbery. And I know a thing or two about highway robbery," he muses when we're about halfway back to my house, rolling up his left pant leg and untucking the skinny part of the ukulele from his sock. "Figured I'd make sure you got your money's worth."

"Lord have mercy," I groan, letting my head fall against the back of my seat.

"Not on me, he won't," Marco grins, an expression that's a little too feral for a freckly, doe-eyed man-child holding a ukulele. "With all the shit I done, no way I'm gonna see heaven. I figure I'm at least entitled to raise a little hell."

I bark out a laugh, giving him a sidelong glance. "That's poetic."

"Nothin' better to do in prison than read. I'm a fan of Oscar Wilde."

"You're something else," I huff, shaking my head. "An ex-con that read poetry in his jail cell and shoplifts ukuleles. What the hell did you do that was so bad it got you locked up?"

Marco's smile falters a little, his eyes darting out the window as we pull up to the house. "Maybe one day you'll find out."

I don't want to find out, I realize too late. I don't want to get drawn any further into his gravity than I already have. I want to take the life I carved out for myself in a hospital broom closet today and settle in it and learn to be content. Marco said that life was too short to waste it on anything but happiness, but he doesn't understand that contentment is the best that most people can get. Happiness, _real_ happiness, that's rare. And even when you find it, it often disappears too soon, slips between the cracks of your life like dust under a windowsill, spirals off on the wind. You go off chasing it, and you run into a storm. I don't want that.

I don't. I _don't._

Maybe if I say it to myself enough times, that will make it true.

"Oh, and Jean?" he says once we're out of the car, headed for the porch.

"Yeah?"

"Back at the pawnshop, you said 'I told you not to call me kid.' And you did tell me that. Right before you went over and passed out on the couch. If you're gonna lie about not remembering last night, at least try not to give yourself away." He's ahead of me, so I can't see his face, but his shoulders are tight as he yanks the front door open and disappears inside. I'm left standing on the porch with Ninette's birthday present in my hands, bloody nails digging into the edge of the rabbit hole before I lose my grip and fall down, down, down, all over again.

The thought that I've upset him makes me feel sick.

The implication of what that means makes me feel sicker.

I hide the mitt under my shirt and wave off Mom and Ninette, retreating into my room and collapsing against the door and trying to breathe. Stomp it down, lock it up.

My little box of secrets shudders, creaks, and shatters into a million pieces. It's not until you're curled up on your bedroom floor letting out panicked, sobbing wails into a pillow that smells like someone you shouldn't want that you realize just how hard of a punch reality can pack.


	7. Chapter 7 - Marco

After the trip to the pawnshop, Jean acts differently towards me, and although he probably thinks he's being clever, it's not too damn hard to figure out why.

He leaves for work earlier in the morning and comes home later, finds things to do and errands to run for his mother that keep him busy. He takes Ninette out to the movie he's been promising her since the day I met him, picks up extra shifts at the garage, pointedly avoids eye contact and conversation whenever he can.

He's avoiding me.

At first, the realization just aches, sinks like a rock in my chest and spreads out through every cell of me until I feel bruised from the inside out. I wasn't supposed to get this invested. Hell, I've never gotten this invested before, and that alone would be enough to terrify me even without everything else on top of it. The plan was simple. Spend a few days laying low, fool around with the ridiculously attractive mechanic as a temporary distraction, and hightail it the hell out of Texas by the end of the week.

It's going on a month, the closest I've gotten to Jean is one too many drinks and an almost-kiss that I might as well have missed by a thousand miles, and North is starting to seem cold and undesirable when I think about seeing it alone.

And the longer this goes on, the more he converses with me in one-word shut-downs, the more times I catch him watching me when I've been looking the other direction, that ache in the core of me starts to lessen, replaced by sharp sparks of irritation. It would be a different matter if what happened the night of the dust storm hadn't played out the way it did, if he wasn't _like_ _that._ God knows I've dealt with honest rejection and a few black eyes from miscalculated attempts before. I know what that looks like.

It doesn't look like Jean Kirschtein.

For all his bluster about being treated like an adult, Jean looks like a scared little boy. I've felt enough fear in my life to see it flash across his eyes whenever he looks at me, and it makes me want to scream, because I don't want to feel it jamming like a blade between my ribs, I don't want it to hurt, I don't _want _to care. Caring has never been the advantage. It's what makes you get emotional and sloppy. It's what gets you hurt, gets you killed. I was supposed to be far, far away by now.

Wanting him was part of the plan. Caring about him wasn't.

So Jean's avoiding me. There's nothing I can do about that. All I can do is try to forget that the sense of helplessness that brings down upon me is enough to feel like it's crushing my lungs. I can pretend nothing's wrong because I'm nothing if not a good liar, can sit around and laugh with Ninette and help Mrs. Kirschtein out around the house while my cut finally finishes healing even though it feels like other wounds are getting pulled open. I can lie to myself every bit as well as Jean can - I've had more practice - and start reevaluating under the painted-on smile. The plan needs to change. I need to re-evaluate and rebuild it to compensate for my own mistakes, because at this rate the only result I'll get is the gut-wrenching reality of having to sit and watch him as he runs away.

My first day back at the garage, I finally realize just how much he's been running.

I'm trying to figure out what's keeping the old Dodge I'm working on from starting when Mikasa walks in, don't think anything of it until Jean drops what he's doing and walks over to her with that crooked smile, wiping the oil off his hands so it doesn't smudge when he reaches up to touch her face.

He leans forward and kisses her right on the mouth, and he looks straight at me while he does it. Makes sure I'm watching. I feel like the floor has fallen out from underneath me.

He's been running. He's been running so hard and so far that I'll never catch up.

Mikasa doesn't stay long, something about her break and wanting to make sure they were still on for dinner tonight before she picks up her things and breezes out of the garage. Jean watches her go, nods to himself like he's gotten some kind of confirmation and reaches over to grab his wrench from the workbench again.

I slam my hand down on it before he can pick it up. "Thought you said you didn't have time for a girl."

"Things changed," he mutters, refusing to look at me and grabbing for the wrench again.

"Things changed awful fast."

There's no softness to him, voice pure acid as he scowls up at me and spits, "Why do you care?"

"I don't. I don't care." The last word wobbles a bit, and I feel like kicking myself for it. "I'm just sayin'. This is all real sudden."

"You don't even know what's sudden; don't give me that shit," Jean snaps, stalking back over to shut the door to the front room so Eren and whoever else is up there can't hear us. Afraid one of us will let something slip. "I've known her since we were kids. Everyone saw this coming, it ain't sudden at all."

"Oh, so everyone _expected _you to end up with her," I lash back with a cold, humorless laugh, slamming the Dodge's hood down with a hollow clang. "That makes sense."

His eyes narrow and he says, "What do you mean by that?"

"You seem to put a lot of effort into doing what people expect of you, Jean."

He's quiet for a long stretch, eyes fixed on the engine he's working on. "You say that like it's a bad thing."

"It can be," I tell him, walking over and leaning against the opposite side of the car. "It can be a damn tragedy, especially if the person you are and the person everyone expects you to be are two completely different people."

Jean's frown deepens, and he leans down to squint at something lodged under the exhaust valve. Look at me. Dammit, _look at me._

"Yeah, well you'd know a lot about that, wouldn't you?" he finally mutters.

The faded lines across my shoulders sear like new wounds. _Our son is dead._ "More than you could possibly imagine."

"We can't all run away from our families because we have some stupid pipe dream about being the next Al Capone, Marco," Jean practically snarls, finally snapping his head up to look at me and throwing his wrench on the floor with a clang. "Some of us have more decency and responsibility than that."

Something bright red flashes across my vision, and the next thing I process is the shudder of Jean's back colliding with the side of the car as I yank him forward by the collar and slam him back against the passenger door, close enough that I can see the motion of tawny irises swallowed up by his pupils for a split second before they shrink back down and the fear kicks in, his whole body tensing under the fist wadded up in the fabric of his shirt.

"You," I hum, and it sounds almost like an endearment, saccharine and delivered through a feral smile. Our noses brush. For me wanting to knock the living shit out of him, it feels strangely intimate. "don't know a _goddamn_ thing about me, Jean Kirschtein."

He doesn't shove me off, but he also doesn't yank me forward like what's happening in the very detailed mental movie rolling in my head, a shaky exhalation hitching up his throat. A second passes, then five, then ten. Almost too quickly to trace, his gaze flicks down to my lips and back up. If anything, my smile grows wider.

He's running, but I've been running my whole life. Jean underestimates how quickly I can catch up.

"I don't," he whispers, giving a little shake of his head. "But you don't know anything about me, either."

"I know more about you than you know about yourself, kid," I snort, letting go of his shirt and scooting back an inch or so.

"Don't call me a-"

"Then stop actin' like one!" Growling a string of profanity under my breath, I step back with a sharp shove to Jean's shoulder that makes him bump back against the car again, shuffling across the garage and glaring at everything in my path - the messy workbench, the rusted lockers, the Model T sitting under a tarp in the far corner of the garage. Another spike of irritation hits my veins, and I whip around, pointing at the car's still silhouette. "And what about this thing?! How long does it take a couple parts to get here from Galveston?! I should be in Chicago right now."

I must be half-delusional to think that I see the hurt expression skating across his face, gone as quickly as it came. "I, uh… well, there was the dust storm. And some of the parts are on backorder."

"Ain't that just fantastic," I hiss, raking a hand through my hair. "Stuck in West Dallas with no way out. Is this how you feel all the time?"

"I ain't stuck here," says Jean, a little defensively. "This is my life. I'm fine with it."

"You're a shit liar."

"And you're stickin' your nose in where it don't belong."

Shaking my head, I hop up to sit on the workbench, lighting a cigarette and watching him through the rising plume of smoke. "You're so scared you can't think straight. You know what's out there and you know what you want, and you're too damn scared to go after it."

"I ain't scared of nothin'," Jean bites back, picking up his wrench and focusing on the car again. He can't look at me when he's lying.

"All right," I shrug. "And how long d'you think you can tell yourself that before it stops working for you?"

"_It has to work!"_ he half-shouts, something in the depths of the car slamming as he twists hard enough at a bolt to break it. "I'm not like you! I've still got my family, I've still got people counting on me! If I could get out, I would, but I _can't._ This is who I am. This is what I get. I get my mom and Nettie and Mikasa and working my ass off in this _fuckin' _garage, and the only thing that's gonna happen if I don't accept that is me going out of my goddamn mind. I had stupid dreams, and they ain't coming true, not now, not ever."

I think of his face back in the pawnshop, looking at his trumpet on a shelf a foot above his head like it was sitting at the top of a mountain. "That's why you have plans instead of dreams."

"And how are your plans working out for you, Marco?"

I can't respond to that. Not for the reason he thinks, because of fate being out to get all of us and happiness being a myth or what the hell ever, but because the answer is _'They were working just fine before I met you.'_

Sighing, I slide off the workbench and walk over to the garage door. "At least I never lied to myself about what my plans were."

Jean looks over at me and asks, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"What d'you think it means?" I say with a wry smile, grinding my smoke out under my shoe and turning around. "I ain't gonna spell it out for you, Jean. This is all something you gotta figure out for yourself. I'm gonna take my lunch break. See you later."

On my way down the street, I stop outside the pawnshop and squint through the gritty window, something clicking in my head when I see the gleam of the trumpet still sitting on the back shelf.

I need to re-formulate my plan. Jean's been running away.

All I need is something to bring him back.

Sasha is sweeping off her front porch when I walk up the steps, her eyes narrowing dangerously as soon as she catches sight of me. "I thought you were gonna skip town."

"I had some car trouble," I tell her breezily, tipping my hat and peering back into the house through the screen door. "Is your husband home?"

"He's in the kitchen."

She mutters something under her breath containing the words _no-good lowlife_ as the door shuts behind me, but that's not the worst verbal abuse I've gotten from Sasha, so I take it as a typical greeting. Connie's sitting at the kitchen table with a dog-eared pack of cards playing solitaire, dressed in his Sunday best even though it's a Thursday afternoon.

"Look at you, all dolled up," I snort.

Connie's head snaps up, a wide smile blooming across his face as he hops out of his chair and wraps me in a tight one-armed hug. "Marco, you rat bastard! I thought you was up runnin' around Chicago with the big boys. The hell're you doing here?"

"Haven't left yet," I shrug. He shoots me a confused look. "Long story. Look, I need your help with something."

"Woah, woah, woah, you can't just bust in here after droppin' off the map for weeks and ask me for help," says Connie, frowning and stacking his cards up into a neat pile. "Sash said you came in and grabbed your stuff and left like a bat outta hell. Where'd you even go?"

"Again, long story, sort of related to the other long story."

"I got time."

Groaning, I slump down into the nearest chair, pinching the bridge of my nose. "You know the mechanic who was gonna fix up that car?"

He blinks. "Eren?"

"No, the other one."

"Oh, the Kirschtein kid, yeah," Connie nods, rubbing at the close-cropped hair on the back of his head and looking thoughtful. "Sasha used to do their laundry before they went broke; he came by once or twice to pick it up. Nice guy. Head in the clouds, but nice."

I don't say anything.

"So? What about him?" he asks.

Stubborn silence.

Connie lets out an exasperated noise, sitting down and resting his forehead against the table. "Marco, _really._"

I do a pretty good impersonation of Sasha's haughty sniff, examining the motor oil under my fingernails. "I ain't gonna apologize. The heart wants what it wants."

"More like your cock wants what it wants."

"It's not about that." It's surprising, how I go from conversational to dead serious in a second flat, hands balling up into fists in my lap. It's not about that. It's not. It may have started that way, with my plans to put Texas in my rearview and never look back, with the thought that Jean had pretty eyes and a clever smile and beautiful hands, but it changed.

It changed with me realizing that he was smart and funny, that he was the most stubborn person I've ever met in my life and admiring it from across the garage or the dinner table, with me watching him swing Ninette up onto his shoulders even after they ached from working all day and smiling as she laughed. The original plan didn't involve me seeing Jean as anything other than one more thing to put behind me when I left.

Now, it's about having him beside me when I do.

"Good God," Connie gapes after he sees the look on my face, leaning back in his chair and shaking his head. "You _like_ him. You actually _like_ him."

"You're sayin' that like I'm a heartless bastard," I reply defensively.

"You are a heartless bastard."

"...Point taken."

He snickers, picking up the deck to shuffle it and dealing me a hand for poker. It's an instinctual motion for us, a buffer for when we have to talk about something that actually matters. "Still… I mean, you actually like him? What're you betting?"

"Is that so hard to believe?" I shrug, peeking at my cards. "I'm bettin' you doing me the favor I came here to ask."

"When's the last time you honestly liked a person you slept with?" Connie deadpans. I glare at him in silence. "Oh, right. Never. So yeah, forgive my skepticism. Raise you folding the laundry out back."

"You sure you wanna do that?" I smirk.

"I been playing poker with you since we were ten. I know what you look like when you're bluffing. Show 'em." Connie throws his hand down. A pair of queens.

Oh, the irony.

"Bluffing, my ass," I grin victoriously, flipping my cards over so he can see them. Full house. "And he's the only reason I ain't hopped the first train headed North yet. And you just lost your millionth hand of poker, so you're gonna help me out."

Connie scrubs a hand down the side of his face. "Do I look like a matchmaker?"

"I don't need you to do that part of it for me, you goon," I roll my eyes, shuffling the deck again. "Look, long story short, Jean pawned something a few months back to pay the rent. I want to get it back for him. A gesture of goodwill, y'know?"

"A gesture of 'get-in-my-pants' is how it sounds to me," he mutters, dealing another hand. "Are you tellin' me you wanna do the pawnshop?"

"I know you wanted to go straight, Connie, but do this for me, man. One more job. Not even the cash. I just wanna get this particular item. Keep myself off the map where the law's concerned until I can convince him to come with me when I leave."

Connie breathes out sharply through his nose, staring at his cards. "You're a damn fool if you think bringing that boy something shiny will make him up and leave his family, Marco. Bet your hat. I like your hat."

"I fold, you little shit," I sigh, chucking my inconsequential hand on the table and getting up to look out the window at the dusty street outside. "I'm runnin' outta options, Connie. I can't stay here. But I can't leave, not yet, not until I know damn well that I gave this my best shot."

A moment passes in silence, and he gets up, walking across the kitchen and putting a hand on my shoulder. "I wish I could help you, brother. I really do."

I snap my head around to look at him. "But the bet-"

"The bet's off," he smiles sadly, looking out the front door where Sasha is still sweeping the porch. "I'm turning myself in as soon as the missus is done cleaning the place up."

The impact of the words smacks into my chest with all the force of a locomotive, stealing the next words out of my mouth and every scrap of air from my lungs as I stand there and stare at Connie, waiting for him to laugh it off, for this to be some kind of joke. I blink at him owlishly for a few seconds before I finally manage a soft "What?"

"I done nothin' but hide in this house since we busted out. Can't go find work, can't even go out on my own porch without being afraid of some cop swooping down outta the shadows," Connie shrugs, nodding at the front door. "And I got Sasha to think of. She's right, y'know? I can't do anything until I'm right with the law. Runnin' with you was great, but I can't do it anymore. Eventually you gotta stop runnin' and grow up, Marco. We ain't playin' Jesse James in your parents' barn anymore."

I am surrounded by a sinkhole of abandoned dreams, Jean's, Connie's, those of so many nameless people on the streets with weary eyes and weighted shoulders. Everyone here is resigned to what little they can get without taking a risk for it, and now that godawful mentality has finally gotten to the one person I thought would always be right next to me, chasing down the pages of history books in years to come. It's the worst sort of betrayal, because I don't even have anyone to blame. Connie wants to take care of his wife. I can't fault him for that any more than I can fault Jean for wanting to take care of his family.

I look out the window and decide to blame the dust. It gets in the crevices of a person's life and makes them heavy, anchors them down until it can rise up and swallow them whole. The only reason it hasn't caught me yet is that I've kept moving until now.

That has to be the plan, above everything else. Keep moving. I've seen what will happen to me if I don't.

"You still lost the bet," I tell him softly, fingers drumming little round prints into the dust coating the windowsill. "So you still gotta help me."

"I told you-"

"I don't need you to come with me, Connie," I snap, blunt nails digging little crescents into the wood beneath them. "I just need your .45 and your word that no one ever hears about this."

He pauses for a second and sighs. "There's a Smith and Wesson in the nightstand or a Colt under the loose floorboard on the porch. Take your pick."

I end up settling for the Smith and Wesson, partly because Sasha's still out on the porch and partly because I've handled that particular gun on jobs before, feel comfortable and familiar with how the weight of it settles in my hand. The bullets get unloaded and stuck into my pocket, the gun itself into the back of my waistband, the borrowed work shirt from the garage baggy enough to conceal it. It's been months since I've gone anywhere packing any sort of heat, and the presence of the cool metal against my spine makes me feel more secure than I ever thought it would.

Connie walks me to the front door, gives me another rib-crushing hug. "All right. Go get your boy his gift. You be careful out there. I'll be watchin' the papers."

"Careful's overrated." I try to smirk, but it just comes out as a sad grimace. "Say hi to the boys back in McLennan for me."

"Sure will," he snorts, walking out onto the porch and draping an arm around Sasha's shoulders as I look back at both of them from the street, moving slowly backwards towards the corner. "I'm sure they'd love to get a postcard from Chicago one of these days. Oh, and Marco?"

"Yeah?"

Even from the end of the street, I can see Connie's big, wolfish grin. "Give 'em hell."

"I always do."

Jean doesn't ask where I've been when I get back from my lunch break twenty minutes late. Of course he doesn't. He's trying his best to forget the fact that I'm even here, elbow-deep in an oil change on some dilapidated Ford and focusing intensely on the task in front of him when he hears the door open. My chest aches. But his forced indifference is a little bit of a blessing for me now, because it means he won't see me walk over to my locker and slip the .45 out of my waistband and under the change of clothes I have stashed in there.

I've never dealt well with my existence being invalidated, from _Our son is dead_ all the way up through Jean kissing some girl right in front of me just to prove a point he's trying to convince himself he doesn't even have. I feel like something is writhing in the pit of my stomach, but I still manage to whistle along with the big band music playing on the radio as I grab some tools off the workbench and go back to the car I was working on before I left. I'll deal with Jean pretending I'm not alive the same way I dealt with my parents doing it.

I'll make myself impossible to ignore.

The garage closes down about two hours before the pawnshop, so I give Jean some excuse about having to run errands in town after we're done cleaning up that he's all too happy to take, mumbling and going to his locker.

"Besides," I say, a little bit of acid in my voice, "Ain't you got a date tonight?"

"Yeah," he grunts, grabbing his car keys and heading out through the front room as quickly as he can without actually running.

"Fine," I growl out to the empty garage after I hear his truck start, changing back into my street clothes and tucking the gun back into my waistband. "Enjoy your fuckin' date. Vindictive little asshole."

I say as I'm about to go commit armed robbery for said vindictive little asshole. Perhaps I should re-examine my priorities.

The pawnshop is as packed as ever, even in the evening. Desperation doesn't have timetables. I can't do this like I normally would, fire a warning shot into the ceiling and calmly tell everyone to get on the floor. People around here know my face from the garage, and who knows how long I'll have to stay in West Dallas after I finish this job. Stealth is not only preferable in this case, it's a necessity. It's easy enough to disappear back into the maze of shelves, pretending to be shopping and fading into the background. Jean's trumpet is still sitting in the same spot it's been for ages. I skirt along the back wall, checking periodically to make sure no one is watching. In all truth, there aren't even that many people looking at the merchandise, most of them sticking close to the front with the items they came here to pawn. There's not even anyone in the immediate vicinity to see me when I slip through the 'Employees Only' door in the back corner.

It's nothing more than a small break room and an office, really, but there's a large cabinet in one corner that's just big enough for me to fit into, curling in on myself and sitting down as best I can.

And now I wait.

Here in the dark and the quiet, there's nothing to do but think. I don't actually own a watch to keep track of the time, and so my mind wanders, flitting back and forth between the past and the future and whatever it is that I'm hovering in now, stuck between the two. I've told myself persistently to always look forward, but all I can seem to do lately is stay fixated on what's long behind me. Telico four years ago always seemed a lifetime away, but the not-so-nameless fear that Jean's been carrying with him lately has brought it closer. Much closer, I think as my eyelids droop heavily, than I ever wanted it.

Dreams happen in vague sensations for me, which is fortunate, really. It helps me know when I'm asleep. Wakefulness is sharp, vivid. There's some comfort in the amorphous memories lurking around in my subconscious because some part of me knows that's all they are - memories. Ghosts.

_Heat. It's hot in the alley and hot on the street but you've never felt this warm inside not with lips on your neck jaw mouth hands _everywhere _and you always loved the winter but now you're starting to see the appeal in burning alive and you don't remember his name and you sure as hell don't love him but that's okay because that's not what this is about that's never been what this is about and sometimes you don't think you were built for love and that it's just not in your anatomy and you can live with that you really really can as long as the nameless boy with blue eyes and a devil's smile keeps kissing you like that-_

"_Marco?"_

_Fear. The heat is gone and there's ice in your stomach and the faded pink swish of Maura's skirt around the corner and oh god oh god this is it it's all over and you should go after her stop her try to explain but your limbs are lead and the lips on your neck feel like the kiss of death and you can't move until it's far too late and you know she's been home for ages by now and there's not even a point in going home now but that's where your feet carry you because even though Telico's always felt like a hangman's noose around your neck there's never been anywhere else for you to go and maybe you're all wrong about this and Maura stayed quiet and you can pull her aside and fix this after dinner of course you can of course that's how it is because there's no other way you can afford for it to be-_

_Pain. A fist in your jaw before you even get through the door and god all you can do is pray that they had the decency to send Maura up the road to play with the Springers she doesn't need to see this it wasn't her fault she's too young to understand but you know better and that's all you can hear through the fresh bruises and your mother crying "you know better we raised you better sinful shameful abomination" pain pain pain and bible verses and the crack of fragile ribs and blood and screaming and it takes some time to realize that it's you and it's not as if you and your brothers never got the belt when you did something stupid growing up but now it's the end with the buckle and ten times the force and the way you can feel your shirt and skin tear on each downward stroke is bizarrely fascinating and you focus on the pain so you don't have to hear the words that hurt so much more-_

_It stops. Absence._

"_Get out." Pain._

"_You're supposed to love me. I'm your son."_

"_Our son is dead." Pain. Pain. Pain._

_You gather what you can amidst fresh blows and head up the road and you do not look back because you know that no one in that house is sad to see you go and the marks of your sins fresh upon your back burn like the hellfire you'll supposedly be cast into but the further you walk the more the pain lessens to be replaced with something else that was born at "Our son is dead" and will follow you out into the world that has never done you a single favor._

_Rage. _

A thud outside the cabinet jerks me awake with a ragged gasp, and I clap a hand over my mouth too late to stop the sound. My shoulders burn, but it's from being curled up in the tiny space rather than the pain of wounds that healed a long time ago, and the sick feeling in my stomach is probably more from hunger than anything else. I have no idea of how long I slept, if the shop is closed by now. There's only the sound of footsteps, of a door opening and closing as someone walks back out into the shop.

Cursing under my breath, I stand and dig the bullets out of my pocket, loading the gun by feel in the dark. Every click feels like another nail hammered in the coffin of a terrible idea, but I'm in a little too deep to back out now, nudging the cabinet door open and moving soundlessly out into the break room. The door out into the shop beyond is slightly ajar, dark and silent. Well, don't let it be said that luck never cut me a break once in a long while.

I can hear the fat old pawnbroker humming merrily to himself as he moves around the shop, the soft scritch of a pencil on paper. Taking inventory. It'll take clever timing, but if I wait behind the back shelf, stay there until he moves out of sight of the front window…

Ten seconds later I've got a cold circle of steel leveled against the back of his skull, voice perfectly calm as I pull back the hammer with a metallic click. "Don't turn around unless you'd like an extra hole in your head. Cooperate and this'll be real easy."

"Oh God. Oh God, the safe's in the back, I-"

"I don't want the safe," I roll my eyes, poking the back of his head a little harder. "Please remain calm and try not to piss yourself. I'm more interested in that sharp little Martin trumpet you got on the top shelf over there."

"Take it, take it," the pawnbroker practically sobs, wringing his hands and flailing side to side.

"Don't turn around!" I snap, steering him down the aisle with the gun barrel and stopping in front of the shelf with the trumpet. "All right, take it down and pass it back, nice and slow."

I can see the smudges of sweaty fingerprints on the trumpet's gleaming surface when he hands it back, and I frown, rubbing it off on my shirt with my free hand. "Got a case for this thing?"

"U-up front, the counter…"

"Okay, okay, settle down." I really hate it when they blubber. Grumbling, I steer him back through the back room and into the office, stopping him at the desk. "Now here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna stand there and stare at that corner for the next hour, and then you're gonna call the cops or whatever it is you're plannin' to do after this whole affair is over. Then you're gonna go home, make a nice calming cup of chamomile tea, and go about your life. Understood?"

More blubbering. Christ.

After he's safely shut up in the office, I book it back to the front, digging the trumpet case out from under the counter and packing it away as carefully as I can while still moving quickly, taking fleeting glances out the front window every few seconds. The quicker I get out of here, the better off I'll be.

The register's open. Damn it all.

I go ahead and clean that out, too, if for no other reason than that I feel like I owe Mrs. Kirschtein some rent money for feeding and boarding me for weeks and that maybe if I hand Eren cash for the car repairs he won't be such a prick to me all the time, stuffing stacks of bills down the bell of the trumpet and fumbling with the latches on the case.

When the pawnbroker undoubtedly files a police report, the first thing they're going to do is look to see who pawned the stolen trumpet. I have the chance to nip that trail in the bud right now. The counter is piled high with record books, so I just grab the first one that looks likely, a label on the spine that reads "April." Jean said he pawned the trumpet a few months ago.

And towards the end of the book, there it is, a hasty write-up on the trumpet with Jean's messy signature across the bottom. I yank the page out and wad it up, jamming it in my pocket before grabbing the trumpet and sprinting out the front door.

The walk down the dusty road back to the Kirschteins' is long and taking on my aching body, but every few steps I look down at the case in my hand and feel a gratified smirk work its way onto my lips.

First job in four months. No shots fired, goal achieved, and a little extra cash to boot.

Yeah, I still got it.


	8. Chapter 8 - Jean

"You're late," Mom says the second I walk through the door, and I don't try to argue, because I know it's true. A quick grocery run turned into a two-hour-long affair, starting with the nearest market not having the right kind of sugar and ending with the engine in my truck threatening to sputter out on the way home, with a whole ocean of shit in-between.

"I know, I know, I'm sorry," I rush out, juggling an armful of paper bags and kicking the front door shut behind me, slumping into the kitchen and dropping everything on the table. "It was a zoo in town. I got back as fast as I could."

"Well, you got back as fast as you could, and I've now got less than an hour to get this cake finished," she sighs, digging through the bags. "What kept you?"

"They didn't have powdered sugar at the general store, so I had to go into West Dallas, got stuck in a traffic jam."

"Wha 'bout hraffic ham?" Marco walks into the kitchen with a mixing bowl and a wooden spoon in hand, licking cake batter off the end. I make a very valiant effort to focus on the pattern of the dust swirling outside the window. Grinning, he chucks the bowl and spoon into the sink and hops up on the counter, handing Mom the stick of butter she's reaching for. "Mrs. Kirschtein, ma'am, that cake ain't even out of the oven yet and if the batter's any indicator it's still the best I've ever had."

"Someone wants a bigger piece," she laughs, throwing ingredients for icing into another bowl and turning around to look at me. "Jean? Traffic jam?"

"Uh, yeah." Shaking my head slightly, I sit down at the table and start unpacking the rest of the groceries. "Backed up all the way out to the main road. Couldn't get down the street in front of the garage. Something was going on at the pawnshop, I think. I saw a police car."

Marco looks up from the counter and says, "Huh."

"Huh?" I ask.

"Huh."

"Where's Nettie?" Better to change the subject. Marco's got kind of a strange look on his face, and it's been a rough enough day already without dealing with whatever it's masking.

"Up the road at the Zerumskis'," Mom huffs, dumping some of the powdered sugar in with the rest of the icing stuff and whisking it until it thickens. "They're sending her back at eight, by which time I'm supposed to have this cake iced and dinner made, neither of which are done."

"I can do the cake," Marco pipes up, shrugging from his spot on the counter.

Mom shoots him a sidelong glance. "You can?"

"Seven kids is a lot of birthdays, ma'am. Reckon I've seen my mother ice enough cakes to do one myself."

"You're an angel," she sighs, standing on tiptoe to ruffle his hair and handing him the icing bowl. "Just get one of the bigger butter knives out of the drawer; I'll start making the dumplings. Jean!"

"Huh?" I jump, looking back and forth between them.

Mom snaps her fingers, looking exasperated. "Don't just sit there like a bump on a log! Help!"

"I, uh… okay?" I burn toast on a good day, but I've got more of a sense of self-preservation than to ask what the hell I'm supposed to do. "I'll just, um…"

"Get the cake out of the oven, sweetie."

"Cake out of the oven. Got it." I can't tell if it's me being generally out of my element or the shit-eating smirk Marco's shooting me from the counter, but I feel off-balance as I get up and reach for the oven door.

"Oven mitts, Jean!"

"Oh, right, shit-"

"Language!"

"_Shoot,"_ I correct myself hastily, pulling on a worn pair of oven mitts and sliding the pan of Ninette's favorite chocolate cake out of the oven. There are two overtime shifts in that pan, milk and eggs and white flour something we've only seen once or twice in the past two years. Sixteen hours of motor oil and Eren's bitching in one tiny pan. I walk back over to the table like I'm holding a bomb.

"Never seen a man look so terrified of baked goods in my life," Marco snorts, grabbing the pan out of my hands and flipping it over to dump the cake onto a big, chipped plate.

"You're gonna burn the shi… livin' daylights outta your hands." By the time I manage to catch the almost-curse and tell him that, he's already sitting back down and swiping up a little bit of icing on his finger.

"Calluses," he shrugs, flashing work-worn palms in my direction and licking the icing off his finger with a grin. "Ninette's lucky. I can't remember the last time I had birthday cake."

"Says the guy that just offered to ice one." Shaking my head, I get up and start putting the rest of the groceries away. "Are you a farmer, a mechanic, _and_ a baker now?"

"I'm a man of many talents," he hums, watching me over the rim of the icing bowl, and that should _not_ send a shiver down my spine.

I practically trip over myself in my haste to go help Mom with the dumplings.

This should have been _fixed_ by now, dammit. I've taken steps to fix this, set myself on the right path and taken steps down it. I went out with Mikasa _last night,_ for God's sake, had a good time, went to the movies and drove her home and kissed her on her front porch before she went inside. I was content. And all it takes to throw me off is Marco making some loaded comments and eating icing.

I'm weak. I'm so fucking weak.

The anger at myself gets taken out on a massive wad of dough that Mom puts me to work kneading, which really ends up more like pummelling, but as long as the job gets done, I don't think she cares.

An uncomfortable silence fills the kitchen, broken by me beating the shit out of the poor innocent dumplings and the slow bubble of the chicken broth boiling on the stove. Marco keeps watching me with that infuriating little smirk as he pulls the cake across the table and starts spreading icing around the top. I grit my teeth until my jaw aches and swear to myself I'm going to stop looking at him in five seconds, maybe ten. Mom starts cutting up chicken breasts, completely oblivious.

A scuffle floats through the cracked-open window, followed by a tiny voice choking on a sob.

"What's that?" Marco asks from the table.

It takes a while to see through the dust when I squint out the window, but I eventually make out a tattered dress and blonde pigtails and a wiry little body hunched against the oppressive heat. "It's Ninette. Didn't you say she wouldn't be back for an hour, Mom? It looks like - ah, yup, blood on her face, _great._"

"I got her." In a split second, Marco's icing knife is clattering on the table and he's on his feet, shoving his chair under the table.

For whatever reason, a little bloom of anger lights up in my chest, some sort of self-righteous indignation in me screaming that how _dare_ he make himself an integral part of my life, so close and so familiar that his first instincts are the same as mine. Dusting flour off my hands, I turn to beat him to the door, snapping, "She's _my_ sister."

"_I got her." _The rest of my argument is lost in the slam of the screen door.

"Did it look bad?" Mom asks, her face drawn as she tries to peer out the window.

"She's come home with worse."

But any consolation that might have given goes flying into thin air when Marco nudges the door back open with his hip, carrying in Nettie, who's positively _wailing _into his neck. Frowning, he sits her down on the sunken couch in the living room, inspecting the damage. It's nothing terrible, a split lip that's bleeding pretty freely and a torn dress and a few scrapes. I know better than to think she's crying out in pain. I watched her get a broken arm set with nothing more than a whimper. Ninette only cries like that when she's absolutely _livid._

"Woah there, little darlin', deep breaths," he says in a soothing hum, petting down the flyaway hair that's escaped from her braids and leaning down to get a closer look at whatever she's done to her lip. "What happened?"

"I w-was up the road p-playin' baseball with the boys, and Tom Wagner started runnin' his _big fat mouth_ again, and I…"

"Ninette, what have I told you about fightin'?" I groan, abandoning the dumplings in favor of going into the living room and kneeling next to Marco, tracing the red stain of an impending bruise along her cheekbone with my thumb but pulling back when she winces. "Some of them boys are twice your size, kiddo. Forget ladylike or not, you're gonna get yourself really hurt."

"He hit me first," she hisses indignantly, crossing bony arms tightly across her chest and glaring at me like I'm the bad guy for talking any sort of sense. No wonder she and Marco get along so well. "Pushed me into the big fence we used to mark the outfield and busted my lip."

"So you ran home?" I ask, standing up to go get gauze and iodine out of the bathroom.

"No, so I beat the _snot_ outta him. Reckon I broke his nose. I heard somethin' crunch, anyway."

"_Ninette!"_ Mom gasps from the kitchen.

"And I ain't sorry!"

By the time I get back, Marco's got her calmed down to a mutinous glare and the occasional sniffle, grumbling to herself on the couch. He takes a quick look into the kitchen to make sure Mom's not watching before he leans forward, an impish smile quirking at his lips. "Did he beg for mercy?"

Ninette smirks. "Twice."

"Attagirl," he whispers, ruffling her hair, and she giggles. But the levity is over once I pour some iodine left over from the incident with Marco's infected cut onto a clean handkerchief and pressing it to the red furrow down the center of her bottom lip.

"Ow!"

"I know, Nettie, but we gotta keep it clean," I mutter, dabbing at it a few more times and trying to chase her around as she squirms out of my reach. "Some birthday, huh?"

"Long as there's cake, I'm fine," she shrugs.

"There's cake. I just watched your big brother pull it out of the oven," Marco nods, hopping back up and walking over to the hallway. "And there are presents, too."

Ninette perks up in a second flat. "Presents?"

"Oh yeah. You're gonna blow a gasket when you see what Jean got you."

"What is it what is it whatisit?!" Her injuries seemingly forgotten, she launches off the couch and practically climbs me, tiny hands knotting up in the fabric of my shirt. "Jean, what'd you get me?!"

"A doll," I say gravely, and her face falls. While there's a part of me that's a little bitter over Marco being right in terms of birthday present selections, I still manage a laugh, peeling her off of me and plopping her back on the couch. "Nah, I'm kidding. Mom, is it okay if I go ahead and give Nettie her present?"

"Fine by me. Dinner won't be ready for a while anyways."

"All right, kiddo, wait there," I grin, jogging over to the linen closet in the hallway where a recycled paper grocery bag with the ball and mitt inside is hidden on the top shelf. While I'm making the long stretch to get it, Marco walks back down the hall from my room with a Cheshire Cat smile and something hidden behind his back. "What's that?"

"Miss Ninette's birthday present, 'course," he says, sidestepping down the hall so neither of us can see what he's got. "All right, little darlin', you ever seen one of these?"

In his hands is the ukulele he smuggled out of the pawnshop, the previously worn wood varnished to a gleam. I still remember him wandering through the aisles, fingers flitting over the strings, the cavalier shrug when he pulled it out in the car like some sort of trophy for a game that no one else was playing. I thought he'd taken it for himself, dismissed the action as childish and reckless and textbook Marco, really.

I feel like someone just sucker-punched me.

"Wow, neat!" Nettie half-whispers, taking it from him with careful hands and poking at the fretboard. "I don't know how to play any instruments or nothin', though."

"Which is why my other present is free ukulele lessons," Marco laughs, flopping down on the couch next to her and turning the instrument over so that his fingers are pressed to the neck. "Now you just strum right there, Miss Ninette, nice even beat, one-two-three-four."

Her dirt-smudged fingers follow the beat he's counting out, a little frown of concentration tugging inward at her features. "Like that?"

"Attagirl."

Ninette keeps up the rhythm, and Marco changes the chords as she plays, a slow blues progression that sounds like lazy heat and long afternoons. "Why, look at that, you're already an expert. _Summertime, and the livin' is easy…"_

This is why. This is why I can't just take the life I crafted for myself and be content with it. I keep trying to write Marco off as a lapse of judgment, as something that's not good for me and mine, and he just keeps proving me wrong at every turn, the bastard. I can't remember the last time I saw my mother smile so often or easily, the last time I saw my sister comfortable in her own skin. He was supposed to come and go and take the last bothersome scraps of my unachievable dreams with him.

Instead, he stayed, and he changed something. I still don't know what it is, but the one certainty I have is that I'm the only one here who's been affected for the worse, the only one who feels like a wreck when they look at him.

This is what Marco does. He takes things that are supposed to be simple and complicates them until you can't tell which way is up or what direction your heart is tugging you.

The two of them finish up the song, and Nettie smiles so wide it looks like her face is about to split in two, grabbing the ukulele in one hand and throwing her arms around Marco's waist. "Thanks, Marco! You gotta teach me more after dinner, okay?"

"You got it, little darlin'."

"Well now you're just makin' me look bad," I scoff, setting the paper bag on Ninette's lap and crossing my arms. "Happy birthday, Nettie. This one comes with lessons, too."

"You swear it ain't a doll?" she mumbles, eyeing me incredulously from the couch. "You cross your heart?"

"Why don't you open it and see, silly goose?"

Still looking nervous, she unrolls the top of the bag and pulls the paper apart, squinting inside. She stills for a second, a twitch of confusion across her face that's replaced with surprise, then awe, and then the brightest grin I've ever seen. "Wow. _Wow!_"

"Told you it wasn't a doll," I shrug as she yanks the ball and mitt out of the bag, holding it in her hands like some holy relic. Anything else I was about to say gets crushed from my lungs in the wake of her flying at me, hugging me so tight that I think I might bruise.

"Thanks, Jean," she whispers, and I could swear her voice wobbles a little bit, but it's hard to tell with her face hidden in my shirt. "This is… this is swell."

"Look at you. I usually gotta bribe you for a hug." That's all it takes for her to let go, stalking back to the couch and grumbling something about 'sissy stuff' under her breath.

"You wanna practice that ukulele for a minute?" says Marco, and Ninette nods eagerly, grabbing for it again. "All right, you just play around with the chords and see if you can match up to what's playin' on the radio. I'll be back to check on you in a few minutes. Jean, can I talk to you for a second?"

No. No, you can't. I'm confused enough without you digging further under my skin and planting roots there. I haven't seen anything grow in West Dallas in years, and it's hard enough to walk around a dead town without feeling like there are vines growing in your ribs and flowers sprouting beneath your sternum. So no, you can't talk to me for a second. I'm the only one here who's even bothering to try to hold it together around you.

"Yeah, sure."

I'm so fucking weak.

He waves me back the hallway towards my room, shuts the door with a grin, and I get the sudden sensation of what Daniel must have felt like in the lions' den. I don't think praying will do me much good, though. Daniel never had a part of him that wanted the lions to eat him alive.

"I actually got something for you, too," Marco smiles, yanking open the bottom drawer of my dresser and digging around through the messy wads of clothes inside.

"It ain't my birthday," I tell him curtly, wanting to shut this down as soon as possible, go back to the careful distance I've kept while I can still maintain it.

"Call it a peace offering, then," he counters, eyes rolling up towards the ceiling. "You… you been acting different lately, and I'm not sure if it's something I've done, so…"

God, does he not know? Does he really not know what a mess I've been, the role he plays in that? What kind of force of destruction is he that he can rip me apart at the seams and never even notice?

I'd know the case anywhere. I'd know it in the dark walking home from concerts that ended late, in the afternoon sunlight on the way home from school, in the slanted twilight through my window when Marco pulls it out of my dresser drawer and sets it down unceremoniously on my bed.

"Oh God," I whisper, fingers hovering an inch over the clasps. "Oh God."

"Go on and open it." His voice is far more even than mine.

"The cop cars at the pawnshop." It's more of a breath than real words, cold metal pressed to worn fingertips and some invisible weight pressed against my chest. "It was you."

"You were on your date. Had to do something to entertain myself."

Something snaps, and I round on him, eyes narrowing and fists balling up at my sides. "You _idiot!_ You brought stolen goods into my house! Where d'you think the first place they're gonna look is, Marco, What do you think-"

He pulls a scrap of paper out of his breast pocket, throws it down on top of the case. A pawn slip. My signature at the bottom. "I am nothing if not a professional, Jean Kirschtein. The place does business out the wazoo. That pawnbroker don't know you from Adam, and without this, they got no trail. Now do yourself a favor for once and open the damn case."

Shaking almost too hard to do it, I manage to flip the clasps open, the case creaking on its hinges when I flip the lid back. There it is. Perfect condition, not so much as a dent or scratch, mother-of-pearl caps on the valves shining iridescent in the setting sun. My hands ache for it.

Marco nods down at the trumpet and says, "Go on."

The weight of the instrument in my hands feels like coming home, fingers slipping into the slides and resting gently atop the valves, pressing down lightly to test them. Still oiled. I could play a concert right now.

"You could probably play something without them hearing you. Ninette's got the radio up pretty loud."

"Don't matter," I shrug, picking up the mouthpiece and fitting it into place. "I never told Mom I pawned the thing. She thinks I just stopped playing."

Marco goes silent for a long time, and finally says, "You're something else."

"Look who's talkin', holding up a pawnshop for a peace offering."

"Play me something," he laughs, leaning against the door and watching me. If I didn't know better, I would say I was transparent, everything in me on display.

My fingers stutter, the first thing they remember a Sousa march we played in school. I'm out of practice. My lips hurt after a few measures and some of the high notes crack, but I couldn't care less. It's the gratification after the pain that matters, the ache in your muscles after you win a race, the blisters on your hands after doing a full transmission change in twenty minutes flat.

The burn in your veins after a boy with hazel eyes and big plans looks at you for a little too long and you're still strong enough to turn away.

"That was good," Marco says from the doorway after I'm done, arms crossed over his chest and an almost-smile tucked into the curve of his mouth.

"That was shit," I shake my head, setting the trumpet down carefully on top of the bedspread and flexing my hands. "I need practice."

"So practice."

"Why?" The sharpness in the word takes us both by surprise, cutting the air like a blade as I whip around to look at him. "Why would you go to all that trouble for a stupid trumpet? Why would you risk gettin' caught for me?"

"I think you know the answer to that, Jean," he sighs.

"God, shut up," I groan, running a hand through my hair and tugging hard in some subconscious attempt to wake myself up. "Just shut up with this cryptic 'you know the answer' bullshit, okay? Tell me why."

"Because you ain't got plans that someone else didn't make for you, and you slapped a pawn slip on your dreams," Marco shrugs, and this would all be so much easier if the smile he gives me didn't look so sad and patronizing."That, and you look handsome as all hell playin' that thing."

"Don't." My voice breaks.

"Don't what?"

"Don't… don't say shit like that. Just… _don't_." This is what planes in freefall feel like, this is the last desperate radio call from a ship as it sinks, this is a car speeding out of control.

Marco raises an eyebrow and pushes himself off the doorframe, sidling over to me with a sort of bowlegged gait. I've noticed it before. Probably from him riding horses all the time growing up. I noticed. I told myself I didn't. He stops a foot in front of me, still staring at me evenly, unflappable. "Why not?"

"Because it sounds…" I start, making pointless gestures once my words fail me.

"It sounds?"

"It sounds sorta queer!" I rush out, throat clamping down on the words and making them come out a half octave too high. There it is.

Mayday, mayday. S.O.S. E-brake.

Marco blinks at me for a moment, and then bursts out laughing.

He laughs so hard that his knees give out from under him, sinking to the floor and pounding a fist against the worn wood. I stand there like a statue, wide-eyed and confused. He calms down enough to take one look up at me before he starts howling again, cackling for all he's worth, and when he finally gets to his feet, he's wiping tears of mirth from the corners of his eyes.

"Darlin'," he wheezes, leaning forward and catching his breath, "I am queerer than a three-dollar bill. The fact of the matter here is that if you weren't, you would've run screamin' into the night a hell of a long time before now."

I can't move. I can't respond. My whole body is a tripped circuit, faint sparks along my wires that fizzle out before I can form anything coherent. It takes Marco another long moment to stop laughing, the levity dropping from his face when he sees the look on mine. I can't move. I can't respond. This is it. My plane is down, my ship has sunk, my car has slammed into a wall.

Crash. Bang. Smoke.

"Jean." A whisper, soft as the fingertips that skitter over over the hinge of my jaw.

Crash.

"Jean."

Bang.

"Look at me."

Smoke.

"Say something."

"I don't need this," I finally manage to croak, quivering from head to toe.

Marco frowns, letting his hand drop. "What?"

"I. Don't. Need. This." Clenched teeth, sweaty palms, all the effort I've got in me gone to making it sound true. "I was _fine _before you got here. I was fine, and then you had to show up. I've been fightin' this my whole life, Marco, and _I don't need this._"

"You got any idea how sad that sounds?" he snaps back in a sharp whisper, his eyes hardening. "I'll go ahead and save you the trouble and tell you that this is a fight you're gonna lose, Jean, because trust me, I've _been there._ Tellin' the truth to go away don't make it a lie."

"I was _fine!_" It comes out as half a sob, which doesn't help my case, but it seems like all I can do is repeat it on loop, accusation sitting thick across every consonant. "This is want I have, and I was fine with it. I have Mom and Ninette, I have _Mikasa-_"

"Tell me you love her," he says, interrupting me.

The words get stuck in my throat. "I…"

"Tell me you've loved that girl since the day you met her, that you're crazy about her. That you're happy. Tell me that, Jean, and I swear I'll back off." I try. I try with everything I've got in me, but it's impossible to say anything with Marco this close, eyes blazing and jaw clenched tight as he repeats himself through gritted teeth. "Do you love her?"

"I…" Lying isn't an option. I've tried lying to him I don't know how many times, and he's caught me in every single one. There's no way I can look him in the eye and blatantly ignore the truth, so I settle for skirting around it. "I think if I tried…"

"God, _listen_ to yourself!" Marco laughs coldly, turning away and shaking his head. The sick feeling in my stomach gets even worse when he walks away from me, and it takes me a moment to stop myself from following, a step forward and a hand half-extended towards him. He whips back around before he reaches the door, one look at me all it takes to make his expression shift from anger to something caught between pity and disgust. "If you _tried?!_"

"What other choice do I have?" I choke out, feeling like something is trying to claw its way out of my chest.

"You got the choice to stop going through your life like it's a goddamn movie scene and _live,_" he hisses, slamming his hand down on top of my dresser so hard that the whole room rattles. "There ain't no point in loving someone if you gotta try to love them."

Is there any point in any of this? Everything I've done has been so careful and so scripted for so long that nothing feels real anymore. The only thing that does is standing five feet away from me that might as well be a thousand miles

"Is that what you want? The rest of your days wasting away in this shithole and trying to love a woman who can't stop this life from killing you any more than you can?" He moves back to me in two long strides, palms warm and steady as they settle on either side of my face. This would all be easier if Marco could just go back to being angry instead of looking so sad, like he's watching me slip away even as the callused pads of his thumbs ghost across my cheekbones. "And it will. All this denial, all this lying to yourself, Jean, it's gonna _kill you._ You'll be walkin' around and going to work and getting married and making babies, and you'll spend the rest of your life fuckin' _dead."_

I can romanticize it all I want, a life that's nothing but an endless loop of the last two years, but Marco has the truth of it, can see the hollowness that's been slowly blooming under my skin for God knows how long. A life of working double shifts just to watch Ninette outgrow secondhand dresses, a worn-out picket fence with Mikasa, being a good son and a good brother and a good lover, it's supposed to make me content if not happy. All I've been feeling for ages is tired. Bone-deep tired and hopeless, and then along came this rough-and-tumble boy on a cloud of dust with a smile like the edge of a knife but a tongue like honey and promises that I could go all the way to the moon if I just took his hand.

I've always dreamed of leaving, but I've always planned to stay. It's not so much a conflict of interests as it is a war between the person I am and the person I'm supposed to be. Marco has left no doubts as to whose side he's on, but I'm trapped in no-man's land, staring at my family and Mikasa and the life I've been raised to think will make me happy in the trenches on one side while the gunfire from Marco and the truth on the other grows louder and louder in my ears. What am I supposed to believe? What am I supposed to choose? And most importantly...

"What do you want from me?" I whisper, feeling like I'm being pulled apart.

The anger comes back in a second flat.

"_I wanna help you get out!" _His grip tightens, fingertips pressing hard against the back of my skull for a moment before he lets out a shuddering breath, leaning down and resting his forehead against mine. "Because I don't have to fuckin' _try_ to feel what I feel for you. It'd be easier if I didn't. What I _want_ is for you to stop being so scared of your own happiness."

How can I be scared of something I'd resigned myself to never have? The fact that I don't stop my hands from unclenching and coming up to rest against Marco's chest is more terrifying than any shot at happiness I've ever had, the fact that I've lost the ability to keep my distance scarier than the idea of a life lived on a script.

His breath moves over my lips in a warm wash, eyes fluttering shut as his face knots up into a concentrated frown, focused on holding something back. "Tell me not to do this, Jean."

I can't.

"Just tell me to back off, and I will. Tell me you don't want this."

I can't, I can't…

"I can't."

Marco lets out a tired, humorless huff of a laugh. "Why not?"

"Because you told me to never bullshit a bullshitter." The battle was over before it ever even started. He gives me that Cheshire Cat smile, and I am lost again.

'_In another moment down went Alice into the rabbit-hole, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.'_

His lips are on mine, and everything implodes. This isn't kissing Mikasa to prove something to myself in a dusty broom closet, isn't pleasant warmth and mild contentment. It's explosions and the world falling out from beneath my feet and being torn apart all the way down to the substructure of my soul and _fire,_ licking along the linings of my veins. I read something about phoenixes once, how they have to rise from ashes, and I decide in the moment that I yank him closer by his shirt collar and kiss him back that I don't really mind letting him burn me alive. Maybe the person who walks away from this will be different. Better.

Braver.

It's messy and ungraceful, both of us colliding in a trainwreck that's been coming for weeks now. My balance falters and in the space of a second we've some how ended up against the wall beside my dresser with a dull thud that aches in my shoulderblades and resonates through my whole body, Marco's hands sliding from my face to my neck to the curve of my shoulders, holding me in place. Fire, fire, white-hot shocks of electricity wherever his skin touches mine, scorching the lining of my lungs when I gasp out a breath against his mouth and he laughs, nipping hard at my bottom lip and pulling a stuttered groan from the center of my chest.

"God, you're so responsive, fuck," he whispers, something almost like awe in his voice when he trails kisses up the side of my neck and I practically arch off the wall, fingers pressing into the spaces between his ribs in some futile effort to give myself an anchor. Am I really? I'm in unfamiliar territory, drowning in uncharted waters, and the best hope I can give myself is to lace shaking fingers through Marco's hair and tug his lips back to mine.

For all the danger he carries around with him, his arms locked securely around me are the first place I've felt safe in two years.

A sharp clatter rises up outside my door, Ninette laughing as she runs down the hallway, and whatever heated haze it is that's been fogging up my brain shatters. Marco jumps a little in time with me pulling back, our mouths disconnecting with a definitive, wet _pop_ that seems too sharp for the heavy air around it.

"Goddamn," he whispers, brushing his fingertips pensively across his lips before a wide smile blooms there and he shakes his head, taking a small step back. "You're a hell of a kisser for not having much practice, Jean Kirschtein."

"I am?" I ask before I realize how stupid that sounds, sputtering and slapping on an utterly fake air of confidence as I look up at him. "I mean, uh. Yeah. Must be a natural."

Ninette runs back down the hall, her voice and footsteps fading, and Marco snickers, leaning back towards me and ghosting smirking lips along the shell of my ear. "Must be."

A shudder runs outward across my limbs, eyes heavy-lidded and chest tight. I'm still falling, so far and so fast that there's a small place in me that's terrified of what will happen when I hit the bottom, of the reality I've just jumped into slamming into me at a hundred miles an hour, crushing my bones and liquefying my insides. But there's more of me that's mistaking falling for flying, a breathy little laugh clinging to my lips and seeking fingers climbing up the column of his spine, mapping out scars and vertebrae under the thin fabric of his shirt. "You gonna stand there talkin' about it or are you gonna kiss me again?"

"Talk about a change of heart," he snorts, kissing me softer and slower this time.

"You complaining?"

"_Hell_ no."

He tastes like cigarette smoke and dust and bold promises, the press of his lips insistent in synchronization with guiding hands settling on my hips and pushing me backwards until the backs of my knees collide with the edge of my bed, my balance teetering and heart climbing into my throat.

"W-wait," I choke out, throwing my arms around Marco's neck to keep myself upright.

He pulls back, hazel eyes flashing molten gold in the twilight seeping in around the curtains as he frowns, brushing messy hair out of my face. "You okay? Too fast?"

"No, it's just." Stammering, I jerk my head back at the bed behind me, the flash of metal still on top of the blankets. "The trumpet."

"Oh, for the love of…" Marco rolls his eyes, letting go of me long enough to grab the trumpet off the top of my faded quilt and plunk it down on the bedside table.

"Hey, no!" I squawk, shoving past him and snatching it up, cradling it my arms like a newborn. "You can't put it down like that; you'll damage the bell!"

"Oh, forgive me for not knowin' the finer points of trumpet care," he scoffs, sitting on the edge of the bed and watching as I walk across the room to place it carefully back in its case, brushing my fingers reverently over the polished surface before closing the lid and latching it shut. The corner of Marco's mouth twitches upwards. "You're a hell of a kisser, and if you touch anything else the way you touch that thing then I'd be willing to bet you're a hell of a lover."

"Jesus," I hiss, feeling my cheeks flush.

"No need for formality; you can call me Marco." I scoop a dirty shirt off the floor and fling it at him. He catches it one-handed, reaching forward with the other and hooking a finger through one of the belt loops on my jeans to tug me closer. "C'mon, darlin', don't be mad. I'm sorry for insinuating that you have a romantic relationship with your trumpet."

A flash of heat crosses my body and sinks into a glowing coal in the center of my chest, and I am such a fool for letting a sly smile and _c'mon, darlin' _ light me up from the inside. I am such a fool for letting Marco work his way under my skin and anchor himself there, for letting him go at the little box of secrets I'd so carefully maintained with a sledgehammer and the determination to make me see things as they are, for letting him kiss me and put a nail in the coffin at any hope of contentment in a world without him.

I am such a fool for him. A small, anxious voice in the back of my head whispers that it will be the end of me one day.

My hands are shaking again. I still them by leaning down and kissing him, letting him pull me back into his gravity like a helpless moon. The memory surfaces again of when I was little, skirting my hands over candle flames and seeing how long it took to get burned. I feel his skin searing under my fingertips, and I want to still them there, don't care if I end up all burn scars and ashes. If he's going to be the end of me, then going down in flames is better than burning out.

"This just made everything harder, didn't it?" I whisper, resting my forehead against his with a heavy sigh.

"I think it makes it easier," Marco shrugs, swiping the pad of his thumb along the hinge of my jaw and smiling softly. "At least you're being honest with yourself now."

"Yeah. Feels weird."

"Jean!" Mom's voice is muffled through the door, distant, shouted from the end of the hall. "Get out here! Your sister wants you and Marco to help her break in that baseball mitt."

"Coming!" I yell back, stepping back from Marco and feeling like a part of me has been severed when I do. The trumpet case gets picked up with careful hands and stashed under my bed. Something to remind me of the person I am, to hold onto when the person I'm supposed to be tries to pull me back.

"I'll head on out and help her get it put on," says Marco from the doorway, hands in his pockets as he looks fondly out into the hallway, where I can hear Ninette yelling something about the Reebs boys being jealous enough to spit when they see her new mitt. "Come on out when you're ready."

I press my hands against the surface of the case, and when I look up, he's gone. The first time I met him, I could see his smile for hours after he left. Maybe it's all in my head, but standing in the stillness of my room as the sun sinks down in a cloud of dust outside, I can still feel his kiss long after he's out of sight.


	9. Chapter 9 - Marco

I like to think of myself as a reasonably tolerant person. I don't get angry without probable cause, I'm friendly to people who are friendly to me, and I try to give people the benefit of the doubt when they aren't. As a rule, I'd say I'm a nice guy, so long as you're willing to ignore the whole "convicted felon" aspect. I'm pretty easy to get along with.

That said, I really, _really _don't like Eren Jaeger.

He's loud and brash, which I could deal with on its own. I grew up with Connie, after all. It's more to do with him banging around the garage like everything he touches has somehow personally wronged him, pointlessly angry at everything. I think I've seen the guy in a good mood maybe twice. Jean always waves it off, says that anyone would be chronically pissed if they had to deal with a business running in the red during the day only to go home at night and listen to hours of lectures about why they should have gone to medical school. It's hard for me to feel sympathy for someone when I'm biting back the urge to deck them.

"Might as well put you on the permanent payroll," Eren snaps as he stalks past the truck I'm working on to go grab something off the workbench. Jean usually tells him to back off whenever he starts down that road, but he's up front taking care of a customer at the moment, and Eren's obviously in the mood for picking a fight. "You been hanging around for what, a month?"

"Three weeks, one of which I spent laid up because of an injury," I reply as mildly as I can. I've seen Jean foolishly rise to Eren's jabs enough times to know that it's like poking a cougar with a stick, and it's too goddamn hot to even think about anything other than finishing this oil change so I can go on my lunch break. "And you ain't paid me one red cent since I been here, not that I'm complaining, because that was the agreement I made. Said I'd work here to pay off the repairs until my car was fixed. However, it begs the question, what kinda business are you runnin' that takes three weeks to fix the transmission in a Model T?"

"You can talk to Jean about that. I never signed off on him dragging the car in here. Sure as hell never signed off on having a mouthy indentured servant for three weeks. This is Jean's mess, and that car'll get fixed when Jean fixes it. I ain't touchin' the damn thing."

"Fine," I shrug, slamming the hood down and shooting him a glare.

"Fine."

"_Fine."_ Bristling, I wipe the motor oil smeared over my hands off on the towel hanging from my belt loop, tossing the fabric down on the workbench as I pass. "I'm headed to lunch."

Eren snorts in recognition, pointing his wrench at me accusingly. "You got the exhaust valve on that Dodge ready to go? Mr. Tius is picking it up at four and-"

"You know damn well I've got the fuckin' exhaust valve fixed!"

The hissed mantra of cursing is just loud enough for Eren to hear it as I stalk out of the garage, and part of me hopes he'll say something about it so I have justifiable cause to sock him in the jaw. Grace under pressure is typically something I'm good at, but the last good old-fashioned fistfight I got in was five months and six counties ago, and God knows I'm in need of some stress relief.

The situation with Jean has a sort of backhanded gratification to it, stolen kisses when no one's looking and weighted looks when someone is, and while having him close is better than nothing, I can't get used to the ache in my chest whenever he pulls away. Maybe Eren and I have that much in common, being angry over something we never signed up for. He didn't sign up for Jean hauling a broken car into his garage, and me… well.

I didn't sign up for Jean. At least not to this extent. And yet here we are.

My restlessness is rearing its head again, and maybe that's why the garage feels close and suffocating, although I tell myself that it's the heat to keep myself from climbing the walls. Three weeks. I try to think back to the last time I stayed in one place for three weeks. Years, definitely. Maybe even not since Telico. Three weeks, and I can already feel West Dallas wrapping dusty tendrils around my ankles and trying to drag me down. Every look at the horizon feels like a warning prickling at the back of my mind, calling me back out. I was never meant for a home or a family or any of that storybook shit. There was always more appeal to me in history than fairytales, something harder, something more real. Famous, infamous, loved, hated, all I ever wanted to be something that no one could deny. I can't be that here.

I had to re-evaluate my plan. Factor Jean into it. The overarching goal has always been out on the road, and now that I've got him, the only thing I see out in these dusty streets is an empty void. Complacency is far more dangerous than anything I'd be facing down out there.

This has been nothing more than an over-glorified, three-week-long job. Time to grab the goods and run.

I decide to talk to him about it as soon as we're out of earshot, rolling my shoulders and hoping that the customer is out of the front room and we could maybe get something hammered out before lunch. The door is tightly shut, but the hinges are quiet, swinging open with a rush of cool air into the garage.

"-n't want me coming over anymore you should just tell me." The voice speaking as I walk in is familiar, a flat alto without the heavy accent that clings to most people from West Dallas. I can't see past the wall that sits between the door and the desk, but a flash of instinct stills me before I walk further, pausing with one hand still hovering over the doorknob.

Jean sighs over the sound of shuffling papers, a long, weary exhalation. "It ain't that I don't want you here, it's just-"

"Then what is it?"

"I'm busy!" he snaps, the dull thud of a hand slamming on the desk as a chaser. Silence. Jean sighs again, shakier this time. "I'm busy, Mikasa. I'm up to my eyeballs in work and I got your brother on my ass and a million different deadlines to meet. I wish I had time, but I don't."

Mikasa?

I don't realize how tightly my jaw is clenched until the ache of it spreads across the back of my skull, eyes narrowed like they could bore right through the wall. I'm a fool for letting it hurt me. I'm a damn fool for letting the fact that Mikasa is still in the picture for whatever reason twist in my gut like a white-hot blade, especially when it's not like Jean's making an effort to shove his tongue down her throat in front of me like he used to. But really, I'm a damn fool for letting any of this happen at all, so I can't really be surprised at the level of my own stupidity anymore.

"There's no need to get fussy," Mikasa responds coolly, her heels clicking on the floorboards… walking around the desk? "But you can't tell me you ain't been acting strange lately, Jean."

More silence.

"Jean. Hey. Look at me." Her voice softens, and I feel like I'm choking on my own throat, standing there and staring at the wall and still seeing her reach up to touch his face, guide his eyes to meet hers. The way I do when he tries to hide. "You're distant. I feel like you're standing here but you're miles away. You can tell me what's wrong, okay? I get enough of this with Eren. Please don't shut me out."

"I'm fine," Jean says curtly, his heavier footfalls rounding the desk and fading across the front room. "C'mon. I'll walk you back to your car."

More footsteps, and the bell on the front door jingles. From the corner where I'm standing, I can see the two of them standing on the sidewalk through the window, exchanging words as they walk. Jean's shoulders are tight, hands jammed in his pockets. When Mikasa turns around and stands up on her toes to kiss him, he darts to the side at the last minute so his lips brush her cheek instead.

I swallow the burn of bile in my throat and turn around to stalk back into the garage.

"I thought you were going on your lunch break," Eren grumbles, glaring at me from where he's still working on the engine he was fixing when I left.

"Decided I wasn't hungry."

"Damn. Just when I thought I had some peace and quiet."

"What the _hell,_" I hiss, slamming the door behind me, "is your issue with me, Eren?"

"You want the outline or the whole goddamn novel?!" he half-shouts, slamming the hood down and stomping over to me, a few inches shorter but made larger-than-life by the pure, concentrated rage that precedes him. "I don't know you from a hole in the ground, and I don't want to. But I do know Jean. I've known Jean since we were kids, and I know that sometimes he gets too invested in other people's shit. And he's been a fuckin' _mess_ since you showed up. Can't focus on his work, staring off into space all the time, looks like he ain't slept in days. I don't know what kinda shit you're pulling because I don't know you, but I know that you're not only messin' with my employee, you're messin' with my best friend. And _that_ is my issue with you."

"What makes you think it's me?" As if we both don't already know.

"I ain't as dumb as you think I am," Eren scoffs, looking at his wrench like he's considering knocking me upside the head with it before tossing it back on the workbench.

"You sure about that?"

"And you're a mouthy pain in the ass. That's my other issue with you." Fuming, Eren storms off across the garage and grabs his wallet out of his locker, throwing up one of the doors in a cloud of dust. "And if you ain't gonna go on your lunch break, I'll take mine."

Slam. Dust. Silence.

It only takes about five seconds for me to feel like the walls are closing in on me again, ragged breaths raking up along the lining of my lungs and heart hammering in loud, wet thumps against my ribcage. One step at a time. Breathe in. Breathe out. Remember the plan. No one ever made the headlines by getting tied up in knots over the idea of a boy with broken dreams and pretty eyes coming out of knowing them the worse for wear. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that things get broken as you make your way through life. That's why it's easier to carry everything you need on your back and try not to pick up anything extra. The only thing you'll get for attaching sentiment to something is watching it break.

Watching him break.

Trying to regain a grip on myself, I wander over to where the Model T is sitting in its corner, as still and dead as it's been since the day it got here. Shaking fingers on the door handle, hot leather against the back of my shirt, the roof of the car over my head. Breathe in. Breathe out. The plan's gone to hell in a handbasket. The only thing left to figure out is how I'm going to fix the mess I've gotten myself into.

The door to the front room bangs open. Footsteps, Jean grumbling under his breath, tools slamming around on the workbench. I should get up. I should go back to work and pretend nothing's wrong and spend what time I can buy myself working out how I can talk my way out of a dead-end town with Jean in tow. Instead, I just lie there. Breathe in. Breathe out. Plans and dreams, history books and fairytales, the road under my heels with a gun in my hand and the dimple in Jean's cheek when he smiles.

Pa always did say that you can't have everything. But I've been proving him wrong since the day he wrote me off as a dead man, and I don't have any intentions of stopping anytime soon.

I sit up long enough to snag Jean around the waist as he walks by, tugging him into the car so that he lands across the seat on top of me with a surprised yelp. He sputters and glares down at me. I grin and kiss the tip of his nose. "Hi, darlin'."

"Eren-" he starts.

"-is on his lunch break, which means that right now it's you, me, and an empty garage." I finish for him, skating fingers up his spine beneath the fabric of his work shirt and taking quiet satisfaction in the shudder that blooms outwards from the touch. "This car ain't good for much else right now. Might as well use it, yeah?"

A flash of something that looks almost like guilt flickers across Jean's face before he bites it back, blinking at me for a few seconds before a faltering smile settles on his lips. "Yeah. Yeah, might as well."

I'm not used to having anything truly my own. Everything I've had for the last four years has been something I stole, and up until now, even Jean's felt that way, fleeting glances with hidden meanings, quick kisses in secluded corners and the creaky dark of his room when the rest of the house is sleeping. It didn't take hearing him and Mikasa earlier to remind me that he's not rightfully mine, but now I can almost convince myself that he is. As good as I am at lying to other people, I've never really been inclined to do it to myself before. But being able to hold him like this, able to feel his heartbeat against my ribcage, to kiss him at my leisure without having to worry about who could see, that changes something.

He's been a mess since I showed up. I'm not good for him. I'm not good for anyone.

But he smiles and pulls me closer and muffles a satisfied hum against my lips, and for a moment, I pretend that I didn't snatch everything out from under him just to make him unbalanced enough to fall into my arms.

And God, what I'd give to convince myself that this is something I could have for good, one thing I could keep. Four years of gunpowder and dust and more money passing through my palms than I ever cared to count, and I still haven't been able to hold onto anything good. Connie's sitting in a jail cell. I've forgotten what Maura's laugh sounds like. And Jean…

Well. There's a ticking time bomb on this whole thing. I can feel it in the thrumming pulse points of his wrists when I press my thumbs to them and roll him over, hands pinned to the worn leather of the seat above his head. _Tick, tick, tick _goes his jugular vein beneath lips and teeth down the column of his throat, goes the work-worn structure of his spine when he arches up into every touch, goes the silent space between his stuttered moans when I grind my hips down _hard_ into his and he gasps into the crook of my neck.

I could fight this. I could make this time different, or at least convince myself that it will be that way, could kiss him breathless, write my name in fingerprint-bruises across the span of his narrow hips. I could forget the fact that Eren could come back any minute, could pull the car door shut behind Jean and set us apart in our own corner of the universe and fuck him until he can't remember his own name, left to settle for taking on the title of _mine, mine, mine _breathed out against his skin.

Or for once, I could tell the truth, to him and to myself. Face the fact that I have to steal him the way I steal everything else.

"I'm gettin' outta here," I hum into the patch of tender skin behind his ear, blunt nails raking down over the seashell surface of his ribs. "Come with me."

Tick, tick, tick. Boom.

Jean pushes me back with a frown, confusion flashing golden behind his irises. "You what?"

"Well not _now._" Rolling my eyes, I go back to my previous task of working on the top buttons of his shirt, smirking through the shadows cast by the steering wheel and windshield. "But soon. Three weeks in West Dallas is enough to kill a man. God knows how you done it for eighteen years. Reckon I'm healed up enough to hit the road any time I want. So come with me."

"Marco-"

"And I'm ready to give up on this damn car ever gettin' fixed. Not a problem. We can snag another one anywhere. Get over the state line, do a couple jobs, head North. Get you an audition; you'll be playin' that trumpet at Carnegie Hall in a month. You and me, darlin', the sky the limit, the world our oyster and all that shit."

"_Marco."_ He grabs at my wrists and hauls himself up, eyes wide and scared and full of the most raw, God-awful hurt I've ever seen. "No."

"What do you mean, 'no?'" I ask. It's not sinking in. I refuse to let it sink in.

"I mean no," he whispers, voice wavering. "I can't leave. Me leaving has never been an option."

"Of course it's an-"

"My mom and my sister are here!" Jean looks at me like I'm ten shades of crazy for even suggesting it, and I am, I know I am, but there's always been a part of me hoping that I'd be crazy enough to make him see the same thing out there that I do. A fool's hope at best, a disaster at worst. "I can't up and leave them. They can't make it on their own, I can't, I… not for this. Not for anything."

"That's an excuse and you know it," I say flatly.

"You're asking me to choose between you and my family!"

"And I'm givin' you a _choice!_" In the close confines of the car, my voice rises more than I mean for it to, bouncing off the hard surfaces and ringing in my own ears. "And you're backpedaling and spoutin' off excuses, what else is new?!"

Jean's eyes narrow, a vein in his temple pulsing visibly. "You don't know the _first thing_-"

"Yes I do! And so do you!" Something hot and uncomfortable expands outwards in my chest, and the car is too cramped, everywhere is too cramped; I stumble out onto the oil-stained concrete trying not to gasp. "How much do you make in a year at this place?"

"That's irrelevant," he hisses, climbing out after me and buttoning his shirt with clumsy, preoccupied fingers.

"The hell it is. And you know as well as I do that two good-sized jobs with me will get you more than a whole year workin' your fingers to the bone in this shithole," I snap back, gesturing around the stuffy confines of the garage. "I ain't askin' you to abandon your family. I'm giving you the chance to _help them._ Put a down payment on a better house. Get Nettie some new clothes. Give them the life you know they deserve, the one you sure as _shit_ can't give them at this rate. You know what I'm puttin' on the table here, Jean, and you're too goddamn _scared_ to consider everything else that comes with it-"

"Everything else like what?!" he laughs coldly, slamming the door of the Model T shut behind him.

"EVERYTHING ELSE LIKE ME." My throat aches from the explosive force that slams into it, a ragged shout that hurts all the way down to the core of me. "EVERYTHING ELSE LIKE US."

"What the hell is _us,_ Marco?" I can't tell whether Jean's an inch from breaking down sobbing or punching me in the face. Maybe both. "This? A couple good moments and a whole life of duckin' around the truth? I've seen what happens to people around here when everyone finds out they're… like _that_, okay, and it's bad. You don't get it."

"Oh, I don't get it. _I don't get it?!_" I have to turn around, walk away from him to keep from screaming. Breathe in. Breathe out. Realize that the rage in my veins hasn't gone away in four years, isn't likely to go anywhere anytime soon. He stands there with his family and his life and his girl and has the nerve to tell me that I don't get it.

_Our son is dead._

"I oughta knock the livin' shit outta you," I whisper, shaking my head and whipping back around to stalk over to him. "I really should. 'Cause there's a lotta things in this world I don't get, but trust me, this is one thing I know a hell of a lot more about than you. And don't you _fuckin'_ dare stand there and tell me what I don't know. Not when you consistently lie to yourself about what you do know."

"I know that I make bad decisions when it comes to you," he chokes out, eyes swimming, tawny and too-bright. "And I know that I can't let Mom and Ninette suffer because of that. I can't go."

"Okay, this is sudden. I understand that." A breathy, half-panicked laugh hitches up my throat, hands settling on either side of his face. "You're a little wound up. That's all. Look, darlin', you got some time to mull this over. It'll take me a while to case out another car I can take, so-"

"You don't have to steal another car," Jean whispers, looking away from me. "The Model T's fixed."

I stand there and blink at him for a few seconds, gaze darting back and forth between him and the car, unable to process it. "But you said that you couldn't even touch it yet."

"I lied about the parts being on backorder." He's shaking so violently that I can feel the tremors beneath my fingertips, bottom lip drawn up between his teeth. "The parts came in from Galveston after two weeks, just like I told you. I had it fixed in an hour. Got new keys made and everything."

And he looks so broken, so lost, that I don't even have it in me to be angry. All I can do is sigh and brush strands of messy blonde back so I have room to lean down and rest my forehead against his. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I wanted you to stay." His voice breaks on the last word, hands balling up into fists in the fabric of my shirt. "Because I knew you'd wanna go as soon as you had the car and you're the first thing that's felt okay in two fuckin' years and _I wanted you to stay_."

He wanted me to stay. Stay for what? For a lifetime of fading into the background like I swore I never would? For standing by and watching him built up his perfect little storybook life with his family and his job and Mikasa while I stand in the wings to hold him when he can't stand the harsh glare of the stage lights shining on his scripted existence anymore? To be a dirty little secret? I don't have a place here. I don't have a place anywhere, really, but the harsh reality of just how invasive I am hasn't hit home until now. Jean belongs here. He belongs to his family and his girl, belongs to the life he said he was fine with before I came along. He doesn't belong to me.

Not like that's ever stopped me before.

"I was never gonna stay in Dallas, Jean," I tell him, stepping back. Giving him room to follow, or letting go. That's his choice, not mine. "You're the only reason I ain't left yet, but I was never gonna stay. I got no place here."

"I'm here," Jean says with a watery smile.

"And you could be with me." I hate how desperate I sound. I hate that this is what he reduces me to, that all my careful plans are falling down around my head because of him.

"But not here," He laughs, no humor in it, just a bone deep sadness as he shakes his head and looks around the garage. "God, not here."

"No, not here. You're right," I nod, stepping away from him and trying to bite back the feeling of being torn apart when I do. "That's why you should come with me. I know what it's like here, but it's not… out there, we could have somethin', you and me. Out there, can't nobody tell us what to do."

And for a moment, for the smallest fraction of a second, I think I've got him. I can see the hope growing from that promise, blooming out beneath his skin and lighting him up. So close. I'm so close, to the point that he steps forward and closes the space between us, elegant fingers reaching out to run through my sweat-damp hair. And my father said I couldn't have it all.

"I can't."

The floor falls out from under me. The world caves in, the sky goes dark, every awful, overdone trope of what happens when the best part of your life passes you by comes crashing down on me at once. This was never part of the plan. He was never part of the plan. The fact that I ever tried to factor him in at all was the only flaw. I am the source of my own undoing.

"You can. But you won't." Hollow. Empty. I don't even have it in me to laugh at how perfect the irony in all of this is. All this time, I've been thinking that my restlessness was my punishment for every sin I've ever committed, when in reality it was anything but. This. This is my penance. Knowing what I could have, being close enough to touch it.

Watching him slip away.

Breathe in. Breathe out. I've never been able to hold onto anything good. The only thing that doesn't drain through my fingers is the plan, and the plan has been around much longer than Jean. It existed before him. It will exist after him. It has to.

"I'm leavin' at ten o'clock tonight," I force myself to say, force myself to look at him, at his pretty eyes and the invisible weight on his shoulders and the happy-ever-afters that I never even wanted until him. "From this garage. With or without you. With or without you, Jean, I mean it, I…"

I mean it. I am nothing without my convictions. Nothing without my plans. Without them, I'm just an empty grave on a family plot in Telico. The fact that I'm not much more than that without him is something that he doesn't need to know.

He doesn't say anything, and neither do I. Is this what closure is supposed to be? It feels like an open wound just standing there and looking at him, an unsolvable impasse sitting between us like a canyon, and I want to scream, want to throw something. It's not supposed to end like this. I'm supposed to make history, supposed to make my mark, and Jean…

Jean deserves more than this. My stubborn, smart-mouthed, short-tempered, incredible, beautiful boy, he deserves more than a dried-up life in a dried-up town. He deserves more and won't let himself have it. I've seen my share of sad things, but I think that might be the worst of them. I can't stay here and let that reality drive itself home any more than it already has. I'll fall apart at the seams if it does. Restlessness pulls at my limbs and my head and my heart, and I've always been one to try for the last word, every last-ditch effort until I've got nothing left in me.

All I can do is lean down and press my lips to his forehead and whisper, "Please think it over, darlin'. Please."

Breathe in. Breathe out. Get my stuff out of my locker and walk away from the garage. Up the street. Away from the pervasive ache of loss gnawing at the pit of my stomach. Away from this.

Away from him.

Sometimes, a job goes sour. Sometimes I don't end up stealing what I set out to steal and it leaves a sour taste in my mouth when I look back on it. I know that feeling. I'm unpleasantly familiar with it. And this, whatever this is, it isn't the feeling of a messed-up heist or walking away without turning any real profit. It's something so much worse.

See, when I get emotional, I get sloppy. I do things I shouldn't do. I don't think things through and I end up making regrettable decisions, and more often than not it domino-effects into a whole dust storm of shit.

I do things like walking all the way back to the Kirschteins' in the late summer heat, thanking the God I'm not sure exists that Mrs. Kirschtein and Ninette aren't home so I don't have to say those goodbyes on top of the one that's still ripping me to shreds with every step. I do things like taking all the money I lifted from the pawnshop register and rolling it up in a paper bag and sticking it on the top shelf of the linen closet. I can always get more. I do really, really foolish things like stretching out across Jean's bed one last time and breathing in the scent that lingers on the threadbare quilt, cigarettes and motor oil.

I tell myself that I have things under control, start getting ready to roll out. Pack up my things and change back into my street clothes. Dig the .45 Connie gave me out from behind the dresser, let the weight of it settle in my hand. I've said it so many times. The open road and a gun in my hand, that's who I am. That's home. Not this. Not him. I just wish that I could still believe it.

Still, the cool metal tucked into my waistband clears my mind a little, helps me straighten my priorities. I get ready to leave as if I'll be leaving without Jean. No use getting my hopes up. A choice between me and his family is no choice at all. Bag packed, debts paid, the entire house swept clean of every trace of me. Like I was never here. A ghost. I seem to make a profession out of being a dead man walking.

The walk back to town saps every ounce of energy I have left in me, and it strikes me halfway there that I have nowhere to go. I can't go back to the garage, can't look at him for eternal hours and watch the decision settle across his face to stay here. That's the worst part of it. I can't even be angry at Jean for leaving me when I'm the one leaving him. There's nothing to do and five hours to kill by the time I make it back into West Dallas, and the clamor rising in my head will drive me insane by that time. I need to get myself settled. Remind myself of the plan.

That, and I need some cash for the road.

There's no real thought that goes into selecting the ramshackle little grocery store five blocks over from the garage. In fact, it's all muscle memory from the moment I decide that I need to do a job. I'm good at this. Practiced. Even so, a homecoming never felt so empty.

Straight in through the front door, one warning shot into the ceiling. "All right, folks, everyone on the floor, and I'll be needin' the contents of that register."

This used to feel good. Used to feel like progress. Now it just feels like the precursor to a bag of cash sitting in the passenger seat where he should be when I finally get out of here.

When I get emotional, I get sloppy. I do things I shouldn't do. I do things like walking into a grocery store with a gun and not noticing the police car parked outside until there's a cold tickle of steel at the base of my skull and a calm murmur behind me of "Put the gun down, son. Hands in the air."

"Goddammit," I whisper, cold metal around my wrists and a lead weight slipping into my stomach. I got sloppy.

This is what I've made of myself. This is me without him.


	10. Chapter 10 - Jean

I used to like being in the garage alone.

The smell of motor oil hangs heavy in the air and there's a stillness about the place, every sound bouncing off the concrete floor and hanging there for a long moment before it dissipates. This used to be where I found whatever small measure of peace I could. Just me, the staticky rattle of the radio, and the cars.

I've always liked cars. They're easier than people. All those tiny parts working together seamlessly to make them go forward, and if something wears out, you replace it. If something breaks, you fix it. A giant puzzle, the thrill of figuring out what went wrong followed by the gratification of making it right again. Real life doesn't work that way. There are no interchangeable parts for when your heart gets weary, no way to patch yourself when you break down. I found some comfort in being able to fix something tangible even if I couldn't fix myself, felt settled in a place where I could be constructive in the middle of my life crashing down around my head.

This place used to feel like home. Marco walks out the door, and now it feels like anything but.

The stillness I used to love has turned stagnant, the hot air oppressive and heavy, clogging my throat. It hasn't been this silent in three weeks. I've grown used to existing with the constant sound that came with Marco's company, of his bad jokes and laughter and the silken hum of his voice wrapping around his plans. Now all I can hear is dust settling on the floor and the echo of his parting words humming in my ears.

_Please think it over, darlin'. Please._

What is there to think about? There's too much here depending on me to allow for the possibility of me running away. I never asked to be the last creaking, unstable support beam holding my family up over the abyss, but it's the hand I was dealt. There's Ninette and Mom to think about. There's work to think about. There's Mikasa and every unfair thing I've put her through to think about.

But then there's Marco. There's Marco and all the bombast and bold promise that comes with him. There's the way I didn't realize that I couldn't breathe in this town until his lips were on mine and he flooded my lungs and forced me to re-evaluate everything I ever told myself was true. As much as I try not to acknowledge it, there's Marco to think about.

I never wanted this. I never wanted every breath I took to feel like another maneuver in a battle with myself. For the umpteenth time, I feel as though I'm being ripped apart, slumping against the wall and letting out a shaky breath. My hands wind tight in my hair and tug, trying to find some sort of grounding in the pain as I sink to the floor and try not to cave in entirely, my traitorous heart slamming against my ribs like it wants to jump out of my chest and follow him.

The open road or Dallas. Marco or everyone else. How am I supposed to make that choice? The body can't function without a heart, but it doesn't do much better without a head. What happens when both are ripped away and scattered to different corners of existence?

This. Me. I'm what happens. A ball of nerves and unshed tears trying to hold on to what I have with bloody, ragged fingernails even as what I want tries to tug me away. This is who I am, who I have to be, I've known that for years. But trying to imagine my world the way it's been for so long seems impossible after finally letting myself hear the could-be's, after finding the hope of something more and letting him hold me so close that I can still feel him under my skin.

I can't go back to the way things were before, responsibility be damned. A life of lies and constantly feeling empty isn't that much better than death. Honesty with myself has become my own undoing.

A sob catches in my throat.

What is there to think about? Nothing. He never gave me a choice, and he knows it.

The garage door rattles up, and I'm foolish enough to let something spark in my chest, a false hope that he got halfway up the road and turned around and came back. Hastily blinking to clear the prickling sensation at the backs of my eyes, I sniff in a short breath and hop up, already feeling the change of heart sitting heavy on my tongue.

Get me out of here. I'm sorry I'm scared and broken and probably about as good at robbing stores as I am at baking cakes, but please, get me out of here. Take me with you.

"The hell's wrong with you?" Eren snorts through a mouthful of the sandwich in his hand, kicking the catch on the door so it rolls shut with a bang behind him.

"Nothin'." I do my best to become very interested in organizing the tools on the workbench.

"Bullshit."

"I'm fine."

"You know you're a shit liar?" Yes, actually. Ironically, the last person who told me I was a shit liar is the source of all my recent lies. Eren wanders over and hops up to sit on the newly-cleared space on the workbench, feet swinging back and forth as he shoves down the last bite of his sandwich and mumbles at me with his mouth full. "You do this thing when you're lyin' where you gotta have something to do with your hands. Done it since we were kids."

"Yeah. Well." He's got me there. Pursing my lips, I move to one of the cars parked nearby and fling the hood up, hands twitching. I can't fix this. Might as well fix something.

"And where's your stray?" he asks offhandedly. If he noticed my hand tighten around the edge of the open hood, he doesn't say anything about it, heels thudding rhythmically against the leg of the workbench. "Not that I'm complaining. I miss when it was just you and me here. You're a pain in my ass, but at least I like you."

"I don't know where he is," I half-whisper, glaring down into the engine. Bad spark plug. Worn out timing belt. I can have it fixed in twenty minutes. There used to be a sense of power in that. Now there's just a sharp crack and a blaze of pain across my palm as the spark plug breaks off in my hand. "Ow, dammit!"

"Careful, dumbass," Eren frowns, jumping up and yanking a clean handkerchief out of his shirt pocket when my hand comes up out of the car bloody. The sticky red clinging to my skin makes me dizzy, nauseous, and I'm glad for the first opportunity to cover it up, torn flesh stinging against the fabric.

"It's fine," I hiss, "I'm fine."

"The hell you are. Hurtin' yourself trying to change a damn spark plug, look like you seen a ghost. Go park yourself in the front room; I'll get something to clean that thing." Grumbling under his breath, Eren hauls me by the back of the shirt collar into the front room, plunking me down in one of the chairs while he rummages around under the desk.

"Don't worry 'bout it," I mumble, but telling Eren not to fuss is like telling him not to breathe, and the only response I get is an increase in the intensity of his grumbling, something about _got your goddamn head so far up your own ass you can't see the daylight _as he pops back up with a bottle of iodine and a scarily determined look. I remember Marco tensing up and cursing for all he was worth when Mikasa was cleaning the cut down his torso, swallow heavily in apprehension. "There ain't no need…"

"Shut up," he snaps, crossing over and grabbing the handkerchief out of my hand to douse it in brown liquid. "Last thing I need is you getting lockjaw and putting me behind a week."

"God forbid you actually do some work yourself - ow!"

"Don't be a baby," Eren snorts, grabbing my wrist and yanking my injured hand forward to dab at it with the iodine-soaked cloth.

I try to scoff, but it comes out as a pained hiss. My whole hand feels like it's on fire, the blazing ache radiating up my arm. "Maybe I wouldn't be if you'd stop actin' like my mother."

"See, this is how I know you're upset over something." He shakes his head, pressing a scrap of clean gauze over the cut and tearing off a strip of medical tape between his teeth. Mikasa must have left some medical supplies behind the desk. Eren's more accident-prone than I am. "You only do stupid shit when you're upset. Remember that time you left your trumpet at school and you were so afraid of your old man throwin' a fit that you tried to climb the front gate to go get it?"

"Yeah. You gave me a leg up and I fell off the top. Kicked you right in the face on the way down," I laugh, looking at the noticeable bump in the bridge of his nose, the thin scar that cuts across it. "You bled like a stuck pig all over the front of your uniform. I thought your mom was gonna kill both of us."

"Gave me a ration of shit the whole time Dad was setting my nose," he nods, a crooked grin stretching at his lips as he tapes the gauze in place with a firm press of his thumb. This is all too familiar.

I think back to the dust-storm-darkness of my kitchen, warm skin under my fingers and the lulling drawl of Marco's voice as he talked his way through the pain when I was cleaning the wound he got doing God knows what. Already, it feels like I'm remembering something that happened a lifetime ago. The absence of him settles in me again, stings like the lash of a whip. I swallow hard, try to focus on something else. Anything other than the cavernous, raw space opening up in my chest.

This is the rest of my life if I let him go tonight. Fading memories and trying to fight the weight of all my could-have-beens crushing me into something weary and barely alive.

Eren wanders back to stash the gauze and iodine behind the desk, perches his elbows on the worn wood and says, "So are you gonna tell me why you look like you got a shit turned sideways, or am I gonna have to guess?"

For the smallest fraction of a second, the weariness and the fear and the crushing weight of all my mistakes almost makes me cave, collapse back into the chair and sob for an hour and tell him everything. Eren isn't a magic cure-all, but for as long as I can remember he's been the closest thing to one that I have. He couldn't bring Dad back from the dead, but he could give me a way to look after Mom and Ninette. He couldn't stop the constant internal scream of everything I'm afraid of, but he could sit and listen while I got too drunk and smoked too much and fumed about it for hours. He couldn't help me over the school's front gate when I was thirteen years old and scared out of my wits of the hell that would descend if I came home without my trumpet, but he could vault over himself, broken, bleeding nose and all, and come back with a sticky-crimson grin and a boxy black case ten minutes later.

But for everything he's done, for all the trust I have in him, he's never seen the contents of my little box of secrets. I can't put that on him now. Not only for his own peace of mind, but for fear of how he'd look at me if I did.

"If I were to just… disappear," I start, trying to keep it vague, "if you were to just wake up tomorrow and I wasn't here. What would you do?"

His grip tenses on the edge of the desk for a moment, shoulders stiffening before he rolls them back and says, "I'd call your house and tell your mother to roll you out of bed because your ass is late for work."

"Eren." It only takes the waver in my voice to make him look up, expression going from boredom to concern in a second flat. I don't realize how tightly my hands are balled up in my lap until a spark of pain shoots up my arm, the fresh bandages around my palm stained by a bloom of red. "I mean it. If something happened and I wasn't here all of a sudden, would you look after Mom and Ninette? Make sure they're okay? I know it's a lot to ask, but-"

"Then don't ask it," he hisses, rounding the desk and yanking me up out of the chair by my shirt collar, eyes narrowed to green slits. "Don't fuckin' talk like that. You got people here who need you. I don't care how bad whatever's gotten to you is, Jean; just because your dad pulled that shit don't mean I'm gonna let you come anywhere close, y'hear?"

"I ain't gonna kill myself, genius," I snap, shoving him off with my good hand and stalking across the front room, falling into a pattern of pacing. "I meant that, hypothetically, if I were to just… leave. Pack up and ship out."

Eren frowns and crosses his arms tightly over his chest. "And why in the hell would you do that?"

"Say a business opportunity came up."

"Say you're full of shit."

"I'm being hypothetical!" Eren doesn't buy it and I'm too worked up to care, raking a hand repeatedly through my hair as a nervous outlet and pacing until I'm sure I must be wearing a groove in the floorboards. "I need to know they'd be okay if I wasn't here. I need to know someone'd make sure they had enough to eat, someone'd check up on Mom and keep Nettie from fightin' boys twice her size and I just _need to know_, Eren. I need to. Hypothetically."

"Oughta knock you on your ass for having the nerve to ask," he grumbles, kicking at the corner of the desk and shooting me a glare as I continue to flit back and forth across the front room. "You know that if you got hit by a truck or something my first priority would be your folks. That applies for you _hypothetically_ deciding to be a piece of shit and run off, too."

A good portion of the tension pulling tight under my skin relaxes, a short huff of relief punctuating the dry heat of the stuffy air as I look over at him with a weak, wobbly smile. "Okay. Thank you."

My decision has been made for me. The reassurance that my family will be taken care of solves a handful of my reservations, even though I know I'm grasping at straws to justify myself. _Out there, we could have somethin', you and me, _Marco said, and I wanted - I _want _- so badly to believe him that a promise from Eren and the half-formed delusions of grandeur swirling through my mind are as good as gospel. There's a spring in my step when I turn around to head back into the garage, the beginnings of a smile pulling upwards at the corners of my lips. I've spent the past two years of my life fixing things. Maybe I've finally gotten enough practice to be able to repair some of my broken parts.

Eren plants a hand on my shoulder and drags me back before I can get through the door. "Hey, no. We're talkin' about this. What the hell're you gonna do?"

I blink once, twice, try in vain to spin up a lie. "I told you, it was just-"

"'Hypothetical' my _ass,_ Jean." It comes out as a snarl, his teeth bared as he gives my shoulder an emphatic little shove and stalks away, fists balled up at his sides. I've become familiar over the years with how fast Eren's notoriously short fuse burns when it comes to certain things, and lying to him is a one-way ticket to an explosion. There are about a hundred examples of hypocrisy I could call him on in regards to that, but he's angry enough as it is, slamming a hand down on the desk and gripping the edge so hard that I can hear the wood creak. "You been actin' more skittish than a cat on a hot tin roof for weeks, staring off into space when you think no one's looking. Can't count the number of times you've looked me in the eye and told me a bold-faced _lie_ as of late. You got your mom worried sick and Mikasa worried sick and hell, you got _me_ worried sick. And now I leave you on your own long enough to go get a fuckin' sandwich and I come back to you in a nervous breakdown going off about skippin' town? What the hell is going on with you?"

"I…" There's no way I can tell him.

No way I can tell him, but Eren's too observant for my own good, catches the fleeting glance I shoot out at the Model T sitting out in the garage. The color drains from his face, and he all but launches out from behind the desk, grabbing my shoulders and giving me a little shake. "No. Jean, _no._"

"I can explain!"

"No you can't, because if you think that's a good idea then there ain't a scrap of logic in your melon head!"

"How 'bout you back off and let me make my own decisions?!" I lash back, shoving Eren away and walking back into the garage with him hot on my heels. "I know what I'm doing."

"And even if that were true, you don't know _him,_" Eren seethes, spitting _him_ like a profanity instead of a pronoun. "No one here does. He just rolled up out of the blue all smiles and smooth talk; you ever heard of a goddamn _con artist,_ Jean? What, is he tellin' you there's some big business endeavor out on the road? You'll end up hawkin' shit door to door out of a suitcase."

Actually, if everything goes according to plan, I'll end up robbing folks at gunpoint. But that's all semantics.

"We're gonna head up north," I tell him, at least a scrap of truth because Eren can spot a lie from a mile away. "All kinds of big bands up there, if I can get an audition…"

"D'you really need me to tell you what a bad idea that is?" Eren laughs coldly, shaking his head. "He's _playing_ you."

"It ain't like that!" Or at least, I've been praying to whatever god that will listen to me that it's not like that. I'll be the first to attest that Marco can wrap someone around his finger with nothing more than a few honeyed words, but I want to believe that I'm not just another one of his plans.

_I don't have to fuckin' try to feel what I feel for you. It'd be easier if I didn't._

I wasn't supposed to happen. _We_ weren't supposed to happen. If Marco's willingness to factor me into the architecture of his life isn't sincerity, I can't be sure what is.

"It ain't like that," I say again, more to myself than to Eren. But he catches something, some soft edge in my voice, the way I look back at the car and remember minutes that feel like years ago with Cheshire Cat smiles and promises whispered against my skin. He catches it, and my delicate house of cards gets slammed with a hurricane.

Eren slumps back against the workbench, a hand coming up over his mouth, and whispers, "Oh God."

"Eren…" I start.

"Oh _God,_" he chokes out, tanned skin going moon-pale. "I'm gonna be sick."

And there it is. There are the results of my unintentional honesty, skating across his face in brief flashes. Disbelief. Betrayal. Disgust. I feel like someone's hit me in the stomach with a baseball bat.

"This wasn't supposed to happen," I tell him, like that will fix everything.

"That don't mean much when you're still planning to run off and do who-knows-what with _him_-"

"What in the hell makes you hate Marco so much?" I snap, something rubbing me the wrong way about how Eren says _him_ like Dad used to say _those people._ Eren sits there and looks at me like he doesn't even know me anymore, and something dark and bitter in the pit of my stomach wonders if this is all it takes to throw years out the window, one moment of me acting in my own interests.

My old man always told me that walking around with my head in the clouds was an inherently selfish thing to do, but a brain full of dreams beats one full of a nine millimeter round any day. Funny, Dad. It seems our choices damn us either way.

Eren doesn't say anything. Just grabs his tools off the bench and walks back to his work, shoulders tight and jaw set in a hard line.

And he stays like that for the rest of the shift.

The hours until seven o'clock pass in silence, and I try to lose myself in broken engines and worn-out parts, try not to feel the weight of the looks sitting on my shoulders when my back is turned. This is the price of freedom. Watching everything you've known turn away from you. Losing it. Maybe we've all gotten it wrong, understanding what it is to be free. Maybe somewhere along the line, we've lost the truth that freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

I'm getting my stuff out of my locker with a heavy heart when Eren finally breaks the silence. "Don't do this."

"Why not?" I ask, slamming the locker shut with a hollow bang and staring at his feet rather than his face. I don't want to see his repulsion again.

"Because you got a _life_ here," he says, and if I didn't know better I would say that he sounds almost broken, grip tightening on the hood of his current project before he brings it down with a rusty, creaking rumble. "There are people here counting on you. Your mom and your sister. Mikasa. Me. You belong here. You belong with us."

I laugh, but it comes out hollow, rasping up my throat like a dull razor. "The person you expect me to be belongs here. The person I am sure as hell don't."

"What does that even mean?"

"You wouldn't get it."

Eren snorts and mutters something under his breath before he grimaces at me and says, "No. Don't suppose I would."

"Listen, just… don't tell anyone. People are gonna ask questions, and if they knew, I don't…" Against my will, I picture the look on my mother's face, picture Ninette growing up thinking that I'm something to be ashamed of. The unborn disappointment of everyone I hold dear feels like an anchor dragging me down, water flooding my lungs and drowning me slowly. "Mikasa's gonna ask questions. Make something up. She'd hate me if she knew."

"And it wouldn't do to hurt Mikasa's feelings," Eren says softly, the measured cadence of his voice betrayed by the flash of rage in his eyes. Breaking his sister's heart. Tack that onto the list of things he'll never forgive me for.

We stand there for a moment, looking at each other, both of us a little more broken than we'd like to admit.

"This is all gonna blow up in your face, Jean," he says.

"I know," I say.

I know.

Eren walks over and lays a hand on my shoulder, mouth working soundlessly for a moment before he gets his words straightened out and bypasses what he wants to say for what he thinks I need to hear. "I'll tell 'em a business opportunity came up. And when he's done tearin' you to shreds and you come back, there'll still be a place for you here."

"I ain't coming back to this," I sigh, looking around the garage and feeling strangely homesick. "I can't live like this."

"But you can live with him?"

"He has a _name_, Eren." The rebuke collides with my gritted teeth, somewhere between a growl and a hiss. "And yeah, I can."

He goes to say something but catches himself again, sucking in a deep breath through his nose and screwing his eyes shut like he could block this all out if he tried hard enough. When he opens them again, he looks calmer. Resigned. The hand on my shoulder squeezes and drops to his side. "I really hope I'm wrong about this, man. For your sake, I hope I'm wrong."

"Yeah," I nod stiffly, grabbing my car keys and ducking out over one of the open garage doors. "I'll write."

The shadows of fenceposts are long across the road on my way home, dust kicking up in a cloud ahead of me, and over the cranky hum of the truck's tired engine all I can think is that I've never known Eren to be wrong before.

Mom's putting dinner on the table when I walk in, smiles softly across the kitchen. "Y'all are late. You and Marco should go wash up before your food gets cold."

My breath clots into a hard mass in my windpipe, and I choke out, "Marco didn't come home with me."

"Oh, did he end up with an overtime shift?"

"Yeah," I nod, painting on a smile and wandering back the hallway. "He'll be along later, I'm sure."

I may be a shit liar, but I can function well enough as long as I don't have to look someone in the eye. There's a stabbing pain in my chest as I all but stumble back the hallway and into my room. Every trace of Marco is gone, his clothes no longer littering the floor, my bed made up neatly, but it's not as though I didn't expect that. Still, it feels wrong without him, something uneasy trickling down my spine as I dump out my work bag on top of my bedspread and re-pack it, three or four changes of clothes, a framed family photo, a half-empty pack of cigarettes. It's strange, how little you really need when you're leaving everything and everyone behind.

I almost forget to reach under the bed and grab my trumpet case, setting it carefully next to my bag before staring at the scene I've created, the haphazard collective of what I guess truly matters to me. This is what I get to have out there. Clothes, a picture, stale smokes, a trumpet, and Marco.

I want that to be enough. I pray that it'll be enough.

"Jean!" Mom calls from the kitchen, a little impatiently.

"Coming!" I yell back, staring at my packed-up life as I back out of the room and go to sit down for my last meal with my family.

Please, please, _please_ let it be enough.

I'm strong enough to make it through dinner without breaking, and I don't know whether that's something to be proud or ashamed of. It's a practiced motion. Stomp it down. Lock it up. Don't let them think that something's wrong. Mom prattles on about some bake sale or something her women's group at church is planning, and I nod along absently, roasted potatoes like ash in my mouth with every struggling swallow.

"Hey, Jean, oo wanna come play catch w'me 'fter dinner?" Ninette asks, mouth full to the point that her cheeks are blown out like a chipmunk's.

"Ninette, _really,_" Mom groans, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Manners."

"Aw, Ma, Jean don't care."

"I'll care if you choke on a potato and go blue in the face, kiddo," I laugh and try to make it sound real, reaching over to nudge her shoulder. "But yeah, we can play catch."

If anything, that only makes her wolf her food down faster, hopping up and sprinting back the hall to get her baseball and mitt while I help Mom clean up the dishes. The kitchen goes quiet, nothing but the clink of old china and the metallic patter of water hitting the bottom of the sink.

"You're having a rough day," Mom hums, rubbing at a spoon with a dish towel until it shines before putting it back in the drawer.

I shake my head, scooting in beside her so I can help with scrubbing off the plates. "M'fine."

"No, see, it's right here." Shaking her head, she reaches up and presses one pale fingertip to the center of my forehead right above my eyebrows. "Even if you're trying not to frown, you get a little line right there. You have since you were little. Your father was the exact same way."

I manage not to wince at the comparison until after she's turned around to dry off something else, putting the last plate on top of the sink and wiping my hands on my jeans. Mom turns back around, and before I can really think about what I'm doing I've got her wrapped up in a tight hug, curled downward around her smaller body and blinking back tears.

"Sweetie?" she asks, rubbing little circles across my back and tilting her head.

"I just." A long pause. A bone-deep pain that seems to spread through my whole body. Stomp it down. Lock it up. I step back with another stock smile, running a hand through my hair. "Thanks for dinner, Mom. I better go out there and make sure Ninette don't hurt herself."

For all her talk about it and all of Marco's testimonials to her talent, I've never actually seen my little sister throw a baseball until now. Half an hour into our game of catch, I'm sweating like a whore in church and shaking the pain out of my arm, hands stinging with the impact every time she throws the ball to me. Maybe it's because I'm getting old, or maybe Nettie's just superhuman, bare feet kicking up dust into the hem of her blue cotton dress as she zips back and forth across the barren yard.

"C'mon, throw it harder!" she hollers from a good distance away, bouncing on the balls of her feet and fixing me with a gap-toothed grin.

"I'm throwin' it as hard as I can," I wheeze, swiping my shirtsleeve across my forehead and squinting against the setting sun.

"Then you're a _wuss._" Giggling, she runs a tight circle around me before hopping up on the front porch, fists planted on her hips in a conqueror's stance. "Marco threw a fastball from this here porch all the way over 'til it smacked into the side of the Carolinas' house the other day."

"Aw, he did not."

"Right hand to God, he did!"

"Ain't no one ever told you that big fish stories don't get you nowhere?" I grin crookedly, jumping up behind her and poking her in the ticklish spots on her sides.

Ninette shrieks and smacks at my arm, snatching the baseball out of my hand with an indignant huff. "I'll show you a big fish story, you goon."

Her eyes narrow in concentration, a skinny little arm rearing back. I'm about to tell her to save herself the humiliation when she snaps her whole body forward, the ball leaving her hand in a white blur and arcing across the front lawn. Light travels faster than sound, but the ball disappears into a cloud of dust as it nears our neighbor's house about eighty feet away. A fraction of a second, Ninette's face still set in determination.

_Thwack!_

"I'll be goddamned," I whisper, jaw slack as Nettie vaults over the porch railing with a gleeful squeal and goes sprinting after the ball. She comes back practically dancing, a smirk slanted across her face as she stops at the bottom of the steps, throwing the ball repeatedly into her gloved hand. "Where'd you learn to do that?"

"Just sorta know how, I reckon," she shrugs, sitting down on the edge of the porch and letting her dirty feet swing back and forth above the ground. "And Marco's been helpin' me practice."

"Has he?" Something's stuck in my throat again, heavy and hot as it cuts off my breath. If Ninette notices, she doesn't say anything.

"Yup! And I'm gettin' real good at the ukulele too! Marco says that if I don't grow up to pitch in the major leagues, I can be a canary at a jazz bar!"

So it's not just me. I'm not sure whether or not to find it a comfort, that Marco's got a way of putting big dreams in people's heads and making them believe that they're possible. I wonder if those dreams will stick with Ninette, if she'll start to feel as choked and trapped in all this dusty despair as I do. I don't even know what to hope for, be it her finding her contentment where she is or going on to bigger and better things.

Don't guess I'll be around to see how it plays out, anyhow.

"Hey, Nettie," I mumble, sitting down beside her. My hands settle on her bony shoulders, turning her around until she's looking at me instead of the winding path of the dirt road leading back into town. "You know how special you are, right?"

"What's eatin' you?" she snorts, rolling her eyes.

"No, I mean it." It's a bad decision to say anything out of the ordinary, especially when my sister's shown herself more than once to be the most perceptive person in my family, but the idea of leaving her without even a semblance of a goodbye makes me feel sick. "I love you more than anything in this big ol' mudball of a world, kiddo. I wanna make sure you know that."

Something apprehensive flashes in eyes the same shade as mine, a brief moment of fear and uncertainty before she sets her jaw and punches me in the shoulder, grumbling, "I love you too, knucklehead. Now get off me 'fore I turn into a sissy like you."

Mom calls her in to get washed up for bed after that, and I retreat to my room, stretching across my still-made blankets and listening to the rising chorus of crickets outside my window. The sky grows darker. The house grows still, only the occasional creak of the old wood settling on its foundation. My watch ticks out a weary heartbeat, eight-forty-five, nine, nine-fifteen.

I grab my bags and slip out the window so I don't have to remember walking out the door.

It's a tense few minutes fumbling around in the dark, piling my things into the truck and praying that the engine picks tonight to start up quietly. It doesn't, but Mom and Ninette have slept through so many mornings of me leaving for work that it makes no difference, the house slumbering even as my headlight illuminate the dust motes in front of them as I pull out into the road.

And this is it. I switch gears and pull away and leave everything I've ever known behind.

I wish I could say I don't look back, that I don't cry like a baby all the way into West Dallas. But if honesty with myself is to be my undoing, it only makes sense to take the ugly truths along with the ones that are pulling me out into the horizon and Marco's arms.

So I admit it to myself. I look back. I cry. It is what it is.

The stretch of road outside the garage is creepy this time of night, long shadows of storefronts crisscrossing the road and the mournful howl of the wind rising up from the narrow spaces between empty buildings. My watch says nine-forty-five. Fifteen minutes.

In those fifteen minutes, I do my very best to talk myself out of this. I give myself every reason I should stay, open my bag and stare at Mom and Nettie's faces behind a gritty pane of glass, pace the sidewalk in front of the main door until my heels ache. I try to be the person I'm expected to be, a good brother, a good son, a good human being, but no amount of self-loathing can make me take my car keys back out of my pocket. Maybe I'm more selfish than I thought.

Ten o'clock rolls around, and the road stays just as empty, little tornadoes of dust swirling up around my feet. Marco's late.

Ten-fifteen, and my stomach starts to feel like it's filled with lead.

Ten-forty-five, and I'm fighting back the urge to scream.

Eleven o'clock, and I lean back against the door and let a chain of disbelieving sobs rip upwards out of my throat.

He left. I made my decision too late, and he left.

All of that talk, all of those promises and stories and the way his smile shifted when he looked at me, and I'm something so easily left-behind that he didn't even bother waiting until ten to get out of town. Was it because he thought I wouldn't change my mind? Did he not give enough of a damn in the first place to bother wasting his time waiting around? What sort of fool have I been to ever think that this could end happily?

The only happy endings I've seen are on paper. Alice came out of Wonderland to find that it was all a dream, but that realization was so much softer than this, so much easier than feeling like I'm bleeding out all over the empty street, all my dreams, my _plans_ that I never even bothered to make until now draining from me in the realization that I never had a chance at being anything but ordinary.

Guess my old man was right on at least one thing. Life ain't a fairytale.

A sharp thud rises up from the alley next to the garage, seconds passing before a silhouette rounds the corner. Without the streetlights it's just a shadow, messy hair, broad shoulders. Relief shakes out all of the tension held in my body, rising over me like a tide as I scramble to my feet and wipe hurriedly at my cheeks.

"Christ, sweetheart, you scared the shit outta me," I sigh, not knowing or caring where the endearment comes from, the only instinct in my mind the one that's telling me to get to Marco and kiss him so hard that it drives any possibility of leaving me behind away from him forever.

"Sorry. I ain't Prince Charming," Eren grumbles out of the darkness, grabbing my arm and tugging me towards the door. "Get inside. We need to talk."

And it all comes crashing down again.

I stand numb, an island with waves eroding my edges as Eren unlocks the door and drags me into the front room, his movements sharp and nervous. "You'll wanna sit down."

"I really don't," I respond, hollow, scooped out. There is nothing left of me.

"Sit _down_, Jean."

A bitter laugh collides with the backs of my teeth. Somewhere in my sadness I've found that this is all so _funny,_ so perfectly ironic. I am a great cosmic joke. This is my legacy. The people who care for me aren't enough to fill the void of the one who doesn't, and that's just _grand._ "Look, Eren, whatever this little intervention is you got planned, it don't matter-"

"I've been lookin' out for your best interests since we were kids, you ass!" Eren fumes, rounding on me and looking like he's a second away from knocking me out. "I've done nothing but try to do what's best for you, Jean, so stop being a fuckin' _child_ and _listen to me for once in your life!_"

"It don't matter 'cause he left!" I hoot, leaning forward and slapping my knee, laughing until my stomach aches along with the rest of me. I can't tell what the tears are from anymore, salty and warm on the backs of my hands as I wipe them away. "He up and left me. You should go pour yourself a drink to celebrate, Eren. You were right. He played me like a drum. You were right and I was wrong."

"Son of a…" Hissing something unintelligible under his breath, Eren hauls me over to the door into the garage, flinging it open and flicking the lights on. "Look."

The Model T is still parked in the corner. The keys are still on the rack. Untouched since I left.

"Trust me," says Eren, a vein pulsing in his temple, "the _last_ thing I wanna do is talk up that bastard's moral fiber, but I ain't a liar. He didn't leave you. Now will you _please_ come sit down?"

It takes a while for my weary heart and mind to process the new information, but when it finally hits home, a bolt of ice shoots straight down my spine. "Eren. What happened? Where is he?"

"Look, just come in here and take a seat, we'll have a drink and I can-"

"_Where. Is. He."_

Eren swallows hard, grabs at my shoulder like he's afraid I won't stay upright. "I thought it'd be better if you heard it from someone you know instead of seein' it in the paper tomorrow. Marco tried to hold up Old Man Pixis' grocery store with a fully-loaded handgun earlier this evening. No one got hurt, but there were two officers nearby. They arrested him. He's sittin' in the county jail right now."

"_Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end! 'I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?' Alice said aloud. 'I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth.'"_

I have finally hit the bottom. Weeks of freefall, of flying, of tumbling headfirst down the rabbit-hole, and this is where it ends, curled up on the floor of the garage with Eren talking to me in murmurs I'm too broken to understand. I was supposed to get out. _We _were supposed to get out. I had signed myself over to nothing but that one hope, and now it's gone.

In losing him, I have lost myself.


	11. Chapter 11 - Marco

I don't sleep my first night back behind bars. How can I? Even after the handcuffs come off, the restlessness seeps through my veins the moment the cell door locks behind me. The hours stretch into eternities of me pacing back and forth across dirty floors, dust crunching beneath my feet. I should be eyeing up weak points in the cell, thinking of how to get out. I should be thinking of the plan, reworking the details to compensate. I should be thinking of something, _anything_ to clean up the mess I've made.

Instead, I think of Jean.

Maybe it's for the best. As far as he'll know, I will have dropped off the face of the earth, out of his life. He'll have his family and his job and his girl and the life he wants so much more than me. Maybe it's leaving home all over again, and the only thing I'll leave in my absence is a sense of peace.

Christ, what a load of bullshit. I don't like the person I've become since I've been in Dallas. Self-pity doesn't look good on me.

Still, that knowledge doesn't do anything to stop the sinking feeling in the pit of my chest. I can't tell if it's the loss of my freedom or the loss of him that's making everything spiral inwards - or maybe I'm just refusing to admit to myself that the loss of freedom and the loss of him have become synonymous when I wasn't paying attention. Without him, I got reckless. When I got reckless, I got myself arrested. This is what addiction is. I made the irreparable mistake of letting Jean Kirschtein become something I needed to function normally, and this is the fallout of trying to quit him cold turkey.

So maybe it's the close quarters of the cell, maybe it's withdrawal symptoms. Either way, I pace. I wear a groove in the concrete floor and chain smoke every cigarette I've got in some futile effort to convince myself that nicotine tastes like him. I press a hand to cool cinderblock walls and feel my lungs already starting to starve for free air. I ignore the fatigue pulling heavy at my bones up to and past the point that my vision goes blurry and I swear I can hear that last _I can't_ echoing over and over again. There's nothing to mark the passage of time, but eventually the sound of cars outside starts to hum through the walls, the shuffles of the other prisoners waking up reverberate up and down the cell block. Morning.

I should be halfway to Chicago by now, windows down, driving through countryside that's green and thriving instead of barren and dusty. I should be reaching down from the gearshift to grab Jean's hand over the open stretches of road, watching the weight fall off his shoulders and his smile losing its sadness with every mile. I should be doing anything other than sitting in a county jail with a bunch of unruly drunks waiting for fate to drop an anvil on my head. Sucking in ragged breaths, I pace some more, wonder if this is what it's like to go insane. God knows I've been climbing up the walls in my own head for years. This is just a bit more literal.

Little by little, the cell block starts clearing out. Angry wives and mothers show up to drag hungover husbands and sons home, cell doors clanging and rebukes flying in their wake. There's no one coming for me. Connie's a hundred miles away, like hell Sasha's finally going to develop a soft spot for me to the point of bailing me out of jail, and as far as Jean knows, I left Dallas last night. The road to ruin, as it turns out, is a lonely one. I pace until my footsteps bounce around the empty hall, turning back on me until it sounds like an army's marching around the tiny confines of my cage. The quiet isn't doing me any favors.

Time takes on a strange amorphous quality, and in the space of minutes or hours I end up curled in on myself in a dusty corner, forehead pressed to my knees and sharp, uneven breaths washing humid warmth back across my face. There was a reason I brought Connie along with me for two years of gunsmoke and racing heartbeats. Me and my demons, we don't get along too well when we're left by ourselves. The things I push down come back too quickly when I have the time and solitude to think of them, rise up and drown me.

_What the hell is _us,_ Marco?_

_Runnin' with you was great, but I can't do it anymore._

_Our son is dead._

My nails dig violent little half-moons into the heels of my palms where my fists are clenched too tightly, the pain not doing much to spike through the oppressive haze of everything I've lost, not enough to cover up the phantom ache across my back or the much more present agony roaring in the center of my chest. There's not much point in trying to fight it, anyway. Nothing to fight for. I've always said that I'm nothing without my plans, but facing the reality of it guts me.

This is what I have now. Being a puppeteer in control of my own marionette limbs, piloting myself over to stretch out across the metal shelf that serves as a bed and staring up at the cracks in the ceiling.

The locked door at the end of the cell block clunks and swings open, footsteps scraping over the grit caked to the concrete. I don't even have it in me to look up, mapping out the lines of cobwebs in the corner while the movement draws closer and someone knocks tentatively against the rusty bars of the cell door. "Mr. Bodt?"

"I'm sittin' in a jail cell after being brought in for armed robbery; addressing me formally just comes across as patronizing," I sigh, craning my neck upwards long enough to see a tall guy with short-cropped dark hair around my age hovering anxiously outside the cell. Suit and tie, briefcase, inherent look of unease. My head drops pack onto the bed with a dull thump and a spark of pain across my skull. "What."

He laughs nervously. "I'm Franz Kefka? Your court-appointed attorney?"

Oh, for fuck's sake. "They caught me with a gun in my hand. The hell do I need an attorney for?"

"It's how the system works," Franz Kefka the Court-Appointed Attorney shrugs, looking like he's afraid I'm going to lunge at the bars or something when I sit up and roll my shoulders, groaning at the stiffness in my back. "Although given your situation, it's good that you realize that there isn't really much I can do for you with you being caught red-handed, as it were."

"As it were," I snort, raising an eyebrow. "You look like you're twelve. How long you been outta law school?"

"Um… a month?"

"Fantastic." The word comes out in a long, cynical drawl, a tension headache starting to throb behind the center of my forehead. "So, you got any idea what I'm lookin' at?"

"Well, once you add up everything with breaking out of the McLennan County jail, the breaking and entering and auto theft charges that they're pressing in relation to that, with another armed robbery charge…" He trails off, counting up my sins on his fingertips like they're childhood mathematics. "Like I said, there's not much I can do."

"No more county jails, then. I'm going to big-boy prison, ain't I?"

"Most likely. Your arraignment is this afternoon, and of course I'll see what I can do, but…"

"You can't do shit; that's why they put you on the case," I snap, scrubbing a hand down the side of my face and screwing my eyes shut to block it all out. "They let me off easy in Waco because I passed myself off as a dumb kid and spun up some lie about having a family to feed. They're gonna throw the book at me this time."

"I won't argue with you there," Franz Kefka grimaces, shifting his weight back and forth. He can't wait to get out of here. Probably scared of catching delinquency like some sort of moral flu. "At any rate, I'll see you this afternoon, I've got, uh… I've got a meeting?"

"I'll be waitin' with bated breath," I deadpan in response, lying back down. Cracks in the ceiling. Cobwebs in the corner. Fading footsteps and the door closing.

I am nothing without my plans.

There's no telling how much longer I lie there and let it all sink home, the fact that I have until this afternoon to re-evaluate, to take all these little pieces scattered around my feet and rebuild them into something I can work with. The fact that it's impossible. I can't make anything happen with a few hours in an empty jail and who knows how long in some high-security joint with no help and no hope of breaking out. I'm crafty and quick on my feet and a manipulative bastard, but I'm not a magician.

In the face of all this, I could swear something that feels almost like longing pulls tight at the pit of my stomach when I think about the garage and the creaky floorboards of Jean's front porch, everything I was so ready to run from a few hours ago. Funny, how your priorities change when you're on the cusp of losing it all. Except it's not funny at all. The realization _burns,_ sears all the way to the core of me, and I hate it, I hate this, hate how all it took was a pair of pretty eyes and nicotine lips to warp everything I've ever wanted and make it seem hollow.

I hate that I caved for him. Softness looks even worse on me than self-pity.

The cell block door opens again, a flurry of movement punctuated with the clang of a billy club hitting the bars and the harsh voice of one of the two cops who brought me in. "You got a visitor."

Lovely. Perfect. Just what I wanted right now. A witness to my ruination.

"Sasha, if you're here to preach or gloat or whatever the hell it is, save your breath," I hiss, staring determinedly at the ceiling and waiting for the sound of her retreat. It never comes. Growling a stream of curses under my breath, I sit up in one fluid motion, more than willing to vent my anger on her if she's stupid enough to stick around. God knows I've spent enough time as Sasha Springer's verbal punching bag that she owes me a good jab or two. "Bet you laughed hard enough to bust a gut when you found out, didn't you, you miserable harpy-"

"Does it look like I'm laughin' to you?" Jean says.

He looks like a ghost of himself, pale and faded with heavy, sleepless shadows beneath his eyes. My first instinct is to go to him, brush my thumbs over the prominent ridges of his cheekbones, will warmth back beneath his skin until he's bright and laughing and _mine_ again. I stand slowly, glancing to the side to make sure that the cop who escorted him in is out of earshot, down the hall and out of our hair. I can feel my weakness for him rearing its head again, and I hate myself for it. Only a fool manages to feel contentment on the wrong side of a jail cell door. "Hey, darlin'."

But for all of my unwanted softness, there is none of it in Jean. I've seen him irritated before, seen him exasperated with Eren's nagging or how much the price of necessities tugs at his already-frayed purse strings, but I've never seen him _angry_, not until now. Standing on the other side of the bars with his shoulders stiff, he looks at me with eyes that are too hard for me to even try to meet their gaze, every sharp plane of his face cast into relief by something that looks strangely like betrayal.

And who have I betrayed? He knew what he was signing up for the moment he let me kiss him over a stolen trumpet in his dusk-lit bedroom; I tell myself that repeatedly in a failed attempt to keep the guilt from rendering me useless. The only person I've betrayed is myself, my own goals, and all for his sake. If anyone is going to cast blame, it should be me throwing it at him. But I can't. God help me (why would He?), I _can't,_ not when I can almost see the hurt seeping out from beneath his skin, painting his clenched fists and staining his rumpled work shirt. The same one he had on yesterday, still buttoned up crooked from where I took it off.

The implications of that clarify in an instant and hit me in the stomach like a bag of bricks. He didn't sleep at home. He changed his mind. He went back to the garage and waited.

Oh, darling.

"Jean," I half-whisper, moving over to the door and slipping a hand between the bars to rest in the curve between his neck and shoulder. If anything, his anger only flares, the sort of burn that almost feels like ice at first, deceptive to the point that you don't have time to pull your hand away before your skin is scorched and scarred.

"Don't," he hisses after a second, jerking away and shaking his head. "Don't."

My guts drop all the way to my shoes. "I never meant for this to happen. You gotta believe me, I-"

"I'm not sure what 'this' you're talkin' about," Jean laughs bitterly, running a hand through his hair and swearing under his breath. "Me? You getting shipped off to jail again? I know damn well you already regard me as the biggest mistake you've made since you hit Dallas, so my guess is that you're referring to you getting arrested for armed robbery."

"You're not a mistake," I tell him.

"Bullshit."

"Jean, _please._" I've never done well with pleading, but for him I'll make it work. I'll beg, I'll get on my knees and fucking grovel if that's what it takes to make him look at me with something other than that crippling disappointment and pain written all over him right now. "Just hear me out."

Another humorless laugh, and his arm snaps forward, a sharp slap bouncing off the concrete as he tosses a newspaper down through the bars onto the floor of the cell. Today's date, rumpled pages, a glaring headline that reads WANTED FUGITIVE APPREHENDED IN WEST DALLAS GROCERY.

"There's something you meant to happen," he says, sounding so unbearably hollow that his voice almost makes my ears hurt. "I hope you're happy. You finally got your front page write-up. Ninette's been crying all day."

Two words. Two little words, Marco, it's easy, and maybe it won't fix anything, but you owe him that much. Go on, say it. "I'm…"

But how can I be sorry when there's a little thrill of victory sparking through my veins? How can I be sorry when I've been swearing for years that one day my family would look at my name in headlines and somewhere far away from them I'd laugh until my entire body ached?

I never did know how to apologize.

"Save it," Jean snaps, both absolving me and condemning me at once. For the first time since he got here, our eyes meet for more than a second. He sucks in a deep breath that shudders outwards across his limbs, almost seeming to deflate as he slumps forward to rest his forehead against the bars, the force of his rage no longer enough to hold him upright. When he speaks again, he sounds very small. "What were you _thinking,_ Marco?"

That I've lost everything I've ever tried to hold onto and you were the newest and freshest loss on a long list. That I had something with you that I couldn't even understand, and watching it slip away still somehow hurt more than a physical wound ever could. That I missed you before I even left. That everything I've ever planned seems hollow and meaningless without you, and I can't live with myself for letting you happen to me. That if this is what I think it is, the price is too damn high, and I've got no idea how to steal it. That you said you were fine before me, and I was fine before you, and now neither of us are fine without each other. That you deserve better. That I should have been smarter.

That I love you, damn it all to hell, I love you, I love you, I love you and it's ruining me.

"That I needed some cash for the road," I shrug.

"You needed…" He trails off into a disbelieving huff, shutting his eyes tightly and letting go of the bars before he looks at me again, accusation heavy on every syllable. "I waited for you. I went home and I packed my shit and I said goodbye to my family and I _waited for you,_ sat there and thought you didn't even give enough of a shit to let me make up my mind. And you needed some cash for the road."

"Made sense at the time." A horrible excuse, but the only one I have. It's better than admitting that the loss of him drove me to recklessness. Owning up to that sort of weakness isn't something I want to do, even if it's to Jean. "Besides, you were talkin' like you were gonna stay."

"I wanted to stay," he chokes out, twining his arms around his torso and curling forward like he's trying to hold himself together. "I wanted to stay and be who I'm supposed to be and live my life and be _normal,_ but ever since you showed up I can't. I can't do it. Gettin' outta here with you was the one shot I had at being okay, and you went and got yourself fuckin' _locked up!_"

The last two words explode into a ragged shout, echoing up and down the cell block. Jean looks like he's itching for something to punch, but he's got enough sense of self-preservation to refrain from slamming his fist into unforgiving concrete or steel. Hell, I'd let him have one good swing at my jaw if I thought it would make him feel better, but no one ever threw a decent punch through metal bars and a scuffle would bring guards running. I'm not ready to lose my chance to talk with him frankly yet, and so I don't suggest it.

"C'mere," I mumble, sticking my arm out through the bars and looking at him expectantly until he steps forward and takes my hand. I try not to notice the nervousness pulling taught at his posture, try not to see how his gaze shoots worriedly down to the end of the hall, try not to think about a lost future where I could hold his hand for hours on end and kiss the sadness out of the corners of his mouth and find out what the sunrise looks like spreading warmth across his skin as he sleeps. Those possibilities are gone, nullified by bad timing and my own foolishness. What I have now is lacing our fingers together and tugging Jean closer until both of us are pressed against opposite sides of the bars, bringing my free hand up to rest against the side of his face. "I'm gonna figure something out. This is just a minor hiccup, a little bump in the plan-"

"The plan don't exist anymore, Marco," says Jean, chiding me like I'm some sort of slow child for thinking otherwise. His voice wavers, spreading warm across my lips as he rests his hand over mine against his cheek and grips it hard, trying to drive his point home. "There ain't a plan that you can make in all this that'll work. The plan is you go to jail for this, and I stay here and wait for you."

"You'd do that?" Frowning, I pull back to get a better look at him, trying to spot the lie and not being able to find it. "You'd wait?"

"Do I have a choice?" he asks, looking so unbearably broken. That was me. I did that to him.

I have never come closer to saying 'I'm sorry' in my life.

Instead, I turn and press a kiss to the inside of his palm and sigh, "Yeah. You got the choice to walk outta here and pretend you never met me. You can settle down and get something going with Mikasa and probably be pretty happy if you give it enough time. Ain't much of a life to be had here, but you could make one, if you wanted."

"I don't want that," Jean says.

"Then what do you want?"

"You."

I laugh softly against his hand and turn back so that the very tips of our noses touch, unable to get closer because of the bars. "Then you'd best be prepared for one hell of a game of tug-of-war with the Texas Department of Corrections, darlin'. I'm a popular guy."

"And I'm patient," he nods, jumping when something clangs down the hall and taking a quick step back. "How long were you supposed to be in jail in Waco?"

"Two years." But I'd gotten off lucky. That won't happen this time.

"I can wait two years. We'll write, I'll come visit you, two years is nothing-"

"Yeah, but that was before I busted out of jail, broke into a house, stole a car, drove to Dallas, robbed a pawnshop, and held up a grocery store, Jean." I hate sounding so defeated, especially in the face of his newfound hope, but my talent for optimism has never been that great to begin with. "If this is what you're gonna choose, you need to think realistically. It could be five years. Eight years. No way to tell until this afternoon. And if I go somewhere that ain't a hick-ass county jail, there'll be no chance of gettin' out early. Not with Connie locked up in Waco. Can you really sit here and wait? Is it worth it?"

"Shut up," he replies flatly, eyes narrowing to thin amber slashes as he moves forward again and reaches through the bars to grab me by the shirt and tug me back towards him. "You don't get to pull this shit. You don't get to drop into my life and turn everything inside-out and make me question myself and what I want and... and question _everything _and then just. You don't get to stand there and try to talk me out of us. You got no right."

"I make a habit out of doing things I got no right to do," I grimace, peeling his fingers off my collar to tangle them up with my own again. His hands are bruised and fragile, the knuckles of spindly musician's fingers red and split. He's already hit something he shouldn't have. It's good to know that I'm not the only one here who's suffered a recent lapse in judgment, although mine inevitably has worse consequences than an aching hand and a broken heart.

"Yeah, and look where it landed you."

"Look, you said you wanted to get out." It's been a while since they let him back into the cell block. They'll be coming back to clear him out any minute, and there are still things that need to be said. I try to rush, stumbling over my words and feeling like something in me is splintering as I reach forward and settle my hands behind the hinges of his jaw, ensuring that he can't look away. I can't afford for him to hide right now. "And I said that I could help you get out, but the truth is, you can do it without me. You can get outta this town and head North and make it without me."

"I can't." Jean swallows heavily, features set in stubborn defiance. "And even if I could, I wouldn't want to. I've spent my whole life waiting for a chance to be something other than what people want me to be. A few more years ain't gonna make much difference."

The fact that he's much more level-headed about all of this than I am probably has something to do with me being the one sitting in a jail cell, but I'm grateful for his steadiness nonetheless, dropping my hands to his shoulders and exhaling shakily. "I'm scared as hell."

"I'd be worried if you weren't." A hand slips through the bars to press against the shirt and skin covering my frantically pounding heart, thin fingers resting between my ribs like they were made to fit there. It helps. "I know this whole situation's shit. But I'm in it with you. And I ain't going nowhere, whatever consolation that might be."

"Even though your mom's probably horrified and your sister won't stop crying?"

"Mom's horrified at a lot of things, and trust me, Nettie'll be more than capable of handing down her personal punishment the next time you see her," he laughs, his palm skating up over my chest to reach up and lace fingers absently through my hair, ignoring my little grumble of protest that it's probably too grungy for human contact. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. One day at a time."

"Days seem awful long when you live 'em like that," I hum, leaning unconsciously into his touch. How long will I have to go without it? How many years of nothing but coded letters and supervised visits and weighted looks? I want to kick myself for every time I could've held him but didn't, for taking so long to make a move in the first place. A week or so of stolen kisses won't last years. He says that he'll wait now, but I've seen too many sad men leave prison to go home to empty houses where someone who made them the same promise once lived. What little I know of love is limited to Jean, but I know that memories are tricky things, that what goes out of sight soon goes out of mind. If - when - I'm gone, he'll start to forget one good week in the face of innumerable bad ones. This will fade.

I'll fade. The idea's always made me feel sick, but now it makes me feel like my heart's about to stop.

"We're gonna get outta here someday," he says, and there's such conviction in it, all the fervor of the faith my parents always had in their Bibles and hymns that I could never seem to find. "Just like you said. You and me, the sky's the limit, the world's our oyster and all that shit."

"Is that really what you want?" I ask.

"I wanna not feel like I'm walkin' on eggshells just to live." This is not the Jean of a month ago, a week ago, of yesterday morning, running from himself for the sake of normalcy. Maybe he's putting on a brave face for my sake, or maybe it just took me getting thrown in prison to make him realize that life's too short to live it for other people's comfort, but either way, he sounds stronger. There's no tremor to his voice anymore, he doesn't try to look away or hide or skate around what he's trying to say. I think, for the first time, I'm seeing Jean at the full extent of who he is rather than who he's expected to be.

And God, he's beautiful.

"I wanna get in a car with you and drive until we're somewhere that ain't all dust and dirt anymore," he says, thumbs brushing across my temples and the ghost of a hopeful smile tugging at the edges of his mouth. "I wanna take my trumpet into grimy hole-in-the-wall jazz bars and play for shitty tips and fall asleep with you on a creaky motel mattress and wake up the next morning and decide where we're headed next. I wanna get the hell outta Dallas and the hell outta Texas and never come back, even if I have to wait a while to leave. I want you even if it means waiting and I wanna make enough money to give my family the life they should have and I want a life where I actually feel _alive_ and I really, _really_ wanna kiss you right now."

He is so, so beautiful.

"Better make it a good one, darlin'," I whisper, taking one last look to make sure the coast is clear. "It's liable to be the last one you get for a long time."

It's awkward and slightly painful with the bars in the way, but even despite that, I don't think anything compares to Jean yanking me forward until we're as close as it's possible to get and crushing his lips to mine, bruising and almost frantic in his urgency. I've kissed plenty of people. I've done plenty of things with plenty of people, to be honest, but I've never been kissed like I mattered. Like the last breath of air in the world was tucked away inside my lungs and I was the only chance at life left in a barren existence. I've never been that for someone, never had the chance to be a saving grace when I was too busy being an agent of destruction, but Jean holds me like I'm something worth keeping, and I curse myself for the tightness that tugs at my throat when his fingertips trace the tendons in my neck and slide down to my shoulders, holding me in place and wordlessly saying _stay, stay with me, you mean something._

All the striving for headlines and history books, all the pain and scars and nightmares, and that's all I've wanted for four years and however long before that.

I wanted to mean something.

The dooknob at the end of the hall turns, and we both pull back, breathing heavily and watching each other through the bars.

"I'll wait," Jean says again, trying and failing to be inconspicuous as he wipes the shine from his kiss-swollen lips on his shirtsleeve.

"Come to the courthouse this afternoon," I almost choke on the words, clinging to the bars and watching him slowly step backwards, making the distance seem normal. "I can't do this alone, Jean, I can't…"

"I'll be there. I promise." That's all he can get out before he's being escorted back the hallway towards the door, looking over his shoulder with every step.

"Bye, darlin'," I whisper as the door shuts behind him.

Me and my demons, we don't get along too well when we're left by ourselves. And the moment it sinks in just how alone I am in the empty cell block, just how alone I'll be in a different cell on a different day for God only knows how long, they all come out to play.

When they come to get me for my arraignment, I'm a blubbering mess in the corner, too far gone to even feel ashamed.

The Dallas County courthouse is much bigger and much ritzier than any I've ever been hauled into in handcuffs before, but the grandeur is kind of lost in the sinking, sick feeling I get when I'm dragged out of the back of a police car to a crowd of people watching me with owlish, disbelieving eyes. People I met while fixing their cars at the garage. Eren, who's looking at me like I'm something that crawled out from under a rock, not too different than the usual expression of disgust. Mikasa, still in her nurse's uniform, who just looks sad for some reason. I don't even spot Jean in all the clamor until I'm almost inside. He's been home since he left the jail, shaved and changed and gotten all pointlessly dolled up for the sole purpose of watching me get shipped off to prison.

Fucking rich kids, man.

The inside of the courthouse has the same quiet, solemn atmosphere of a church, which doesn't make me feel any more comfortable about the situation. The last thing I need is to associate my surroundings with an entire childhood of aching knees on a hard wood kneeling bench begging God to absolve the sinful nature of my existence and wondering if praying hard enough would change me. It wasn't until I was older that I started to wonder if there was even anyone up there listening, a few more years before I decided that if there was, he certainly had bigger things to worry about than who I wanted to fuck. I swear I can almost hear creaking pews and warbly organ music as I'm led down a wide hallway and into a courtroom, shoved into a chair beside Franz Kefka, the world's worst court-appointed attorney.

A weary-looking judge trundles in, and everyone rises in unison. Almost liturgical.

Bless me, father, for I have sinned, and everyone here knows it.

I look over my shoulder as a low, droning voice reads down a long list of charges, scanning faces until I find Jean's. He smiles tightly, the motion not quite reaching his eyes, mouths _I'm right here,_ and I wish that the reassurance made it easier to breathe. Fraz Kefka elbows me in the ribs, hissing at me to turn around, and I do so reluctantly.

There is no clever loophole here. I haven't been given an out. The only option is to play the game and play it well.

The judge harrumphs and flips through some papers before looking up at me. "Son, I don't believe I've seen a kid your age get into this much trouble in my natural life."

"I seem to have a talent for it, Your Honor," I reply, trying very hard to reign in the smirk that wants to come out with it.

"That you do. Any particular reason you decided to escape from prison, steal a car, and hold up a grocery store?"

Because I'm a dead man walking who wants to stick it to my parents for denying my existence, all while becoming infamous, robbing the countryside blind, and hitting the road with my lover, who happens to be your friendly local mechanic.

"I had a very troubled childhood, Your Honor." Yeah. That about covers it.

"And apparently a troubled adulthood. One that I fully intend to nip in the bud," the judge rumbles, looking down at his papers again. "And so, for one count of prison escape, one count of breaking and entering, one count of auto theft, and two counts of armed robbery, you are hereby sentenced to serve sixteen years at Eastham prison farm."

Everything tunnels inward, and I can't make sense of my surroundings anymore.

Sixteen years.

It took me eight years to realize what I was, another two to realize what it meant and the secrets I'd have to keep.

Sixteen years.

It took a year and a half for the wounds on my back to fully heal. They kept getting infected because there was nowhere for me to lie down and rest long enough to let them knit themselves together, tearing them open anew every time I had to move my arms too much.

Sixteen years.

It took me a month to fall in love with Jean Kirschtein, only wind up turning around in a numb haze in the middle of a courtroom to watch him collapse, Eren holding him up with wide eyes and frantic murmurs into his ear.

Sixteen years at Eastham prison farm.

And now my religious crisis is solved. There has to be a God, and this has to be his way of punishing me, because this is nothing short of heavenly architecture. It's nothing if not divine humor, the irony of the fact that I served sixteen years of hell on one farm just to run away and end up serving sixteen years on another.

_But the eyes of the wicked will fail, and escape will elude them; their hope will become a dying gasp…_

_We raised you better! You know better!_

_Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts…_

_I didn't give birth to an abomination._

It took me sixteen years to die the first time. I wonder how long it will take now.

It's not under my control, a little tickle that starts in my chest and spreads outwards in icy tendrils, constricting around my throat. Back in handcuffs, lead around the table and towards the aisle. I start chuckling.

Sixteen years at Eastham prison farm. A giggle slips out between my gritted teeth, a manic grin stretching at my lips until my whole face hurts.

Sixteen years until I can kiss Jean again.

The peals of hysterical laughter rend my throat as they claw their way up out of my lungs, each and every sound painful. I can't breathe, tears of psychotic mirth streaming down my cheeks as I double over, clutching at my stomach. I'd throw up if I could stop laughing long enough to do it. It takes two cops to haul me out of the courtroom, looping grips under my arms and dragging me backwards so my heels scrape across the carpet. I'm laughing too hard to walk.

I catch sight of Jean just before we get out the door, muffling sobs into his hand and watching me with a look of utter horror. It's worth a shot. Not like anyone else will understand what it means. The ravings of a madman. Maybe that's all my love is after all.

"How long can you wait, darlin'?!" I cackle, tears swimming too thick for me to make out anything but him anymore. "Just how long can you wait?!"

He doesn't say anything. Of course he doesn't. But his face says enough in the seconds before the courthouse door shuts in my face.

It says, _not sixteen years._

I laugh up to and past the point that they throw me in the back of a transport car and send me up the road, curled up on a cold metal floor and howling with everything I've got in me, because there's nothing else left for me to do. I've read poems about the world ending in fire or ice, with a bang or a whimper. Mine ends in loud bursts of sobbing laughter. It's all gone.

I am nothing without my plans.

I am nothing without him.

I am nothing without…

I am nothing.


	12. Chapter 12 - JEan

The first letter shows up after two weeks.

It's an afterthought, a casual mention over dinner, not the slightest hint of tension in Mom's voice when she mentions that I got something in the mail. A battered envelope, my name in stark, bold handwriting. She asks who it's from. I tell her it's a bill.

At two o'clock in the morning, I end up on the front porch of the old caretaker's cottage that Eren rents on his parents' ranch outside of town, clutching the rumpled paper in a white-knuckled grip. He shakes his head and waves me inside, shoves a drink in my hand before I realize he's poured it. I've been self-medicating since the courthouse, showing up to work smelling like a distillery and nursing persistent headaches, but he's at least had the grace to not say anything about it until now. But, since it's Eren, my grace period is bound to run out.

"You're a mess," he snaps, snatching the envelope from me with a glare and stalking across the living room to grab some of the shitty whiskey he keeps under the sink for himself.

"Wouldn't you be?" I ask, empty, voice and features flat. I don't have to bother putting on a show for him the way I do with Mom and Ninette and Mikasa. He's seen the fallout firsthand.

"He's _gone,_ Jean," Eren groans, rubbing a hand over his forehead like he's trying to make a child understand something that goes far over their head. "He's gonna be locked up tight in that prison for a long time, and good fuckin' riddance. You can't sit around and beat your head against a wall for sixteen years; even _your_ thick skull will cave in from that. You gotta live your life."

I snatch the whiskey and the unopened envelope back from him with an angry snarl, taking a slug right out of the bottle and relishing the burn slipping down my throat because at least it feels like _something._ "You can say that easy enough. Your life ain't drivin' you up the walls. I wouldn't expect you to get it."

"Oh, _poor baby_." He looks like he's got half a mind to hit me, and I've got half a mind to let him. Historically, he's been the only person capable of knocking any sense into me, and God knows I could use some right now. "Poor little Jean missed his chance at runnin' away, and now he's sulking 'cause his half-baked, reckless, _illegal_ plans didn't pan out. I get it well enough."

"It ain't about runnin' away, and you know it."

"No, it's about _him,_" Eren laughs bitterly, and I don't have it in me to yell that he has a name. I haven't been able to say it myself for weeks. Even thinking it burns. "You're so goddamn naive."

"Don't fuckin' patronize me," I hiss, landing a solid shove in the center of his chest and pushing him out of my personal space. The last thing I want him to see are his words hitting home.

But he comes right back in for the kill, shoving me back and taking the bottle that I've already mostly drained out of my drunkenly slack grip. "Oh, is tellin' the truth patronizing, now?! You thought that you found someone on a white horse to take you away from your problems, and you're upset because you found out that he ain't anything close. That's your problem, Jean, you're a grown-ass man and you still wanna look at life like it's some kinda story book…"

"You sound like my dad," I chuckle darkly.

"Fuck you." For all the venom in Eren's voice, I don't miss the wounded look that flashes across his face, there and gone in an instant. "All I'm tryin' to say is that it's possible to fall in love with the idea of a person. You've always been in love with gettin' outta here; we all used to be. But that was just shit we spouted when we were in school. Sometimes real life just means learning to love what you have instead of what you can never get."

My stomach churns, either from the booze or from his words hitting all my weak points. "You think that's what this is? Me being in love with an idea?"

"I know that's what it is."

"You can't possibly know-"

"For Christ's sake, _let it end!_" Eren shouts, darting forwards and tugging me into a brief, inebriated scuffle that ends up with him panting on the other side of the living room holding the envelope and nursing a freshly bruised jaw. Grimacing, he looks down at the heavy-handed ink and dog-eared paper, back up to me. "Just let it be over. He pulled the wool over your eyes, you believed him, and I ain't gonna blame you for that. But sittin' here and trying to drink yourself to death over a letter you ain't even opened is something I'm gonna hold you accountable for; sorry for caring about you enough to do it! Hell, it's probably him trying to con you into doing something to help him out. If you just ignore it and move on, he'll stop."

"What if I don't wanna move-" I start, cut off mid-sentence by Eren ripping the envelope open and yanking out the thin sheet of paper inside. "What the _fuck,_ Eren?!"

Eren's eyes dart back and forth over the lines of text, scanning quickly. I'm halfway across the room when he shakes his head, pulls a cigarette lighter out of his pocket, and sends the whole letter up in a plume of flame, dropping it into the umbrella stand next to the front door to let it burn out.

The most awful, broken noise I've ever heard myself produce croaks out of my throat, and I go boneless, slumping down on the couch and watching the smoke and orange glow radiate from the umbrella stand until nothing but a few scraps of ash floating on the updraft remain. Eren walks over to kneel down in front of me, and I can't even muster the willpower to hit him, staring blankly in front of me and feeling the room start to spin. I got too drunk too fast. It's only a matter of time before I keel over unconscious.

Warm, callused hands settle on either side of my flushed face, and I pretend they're someone else's until Eren's raspy tenor shatters the illusion, the familiarity of it cutting through the haze over my brain. "_Let it end,_ Jean. For everyone else's sake if not for your own. You got people here that need you, people here that lo-... We can't watch you do this to yourself. You get another letter, you do what I just did. You throw it out, you burn it, rip it into bits, I don't care. Don't read it. Don't write back. Let him go."

"Let him go," I echo numbly, feeling an ache bloom in my chest at the words.

"He ain't good for you," Eren says, hands shaking slightly as he pulls back and stands up again. "This, what you got here, this is what's best for you. This is who you are."

"Who I have to be." Strangely, I feel almost like laughing. Eren's giving me the same talk I gave myself for years. Stomp it down. Lock it up. Settle for contentment if not happiness.

He reaches down to give my shoulder a squeeze, mumbles something, but I'm too drunk and dizzy to make it out. The next thing I process is a balled-up blanket hitting my head from the other side of the room, the hall light clicking off as Eren heads back to bed. "Sleep on the couch, dumbass. If you wrapped your truck around a lamppost on the way home and died, I'd get behind at the shop."

I eventually fall asleep, but not until I spend endless stretches of time in the darkness curled up in a ball on the couch, trying to remember how to breathe as I sob out a whispered mantra of "Let him go, let him go, let him go."

If that's what it takes to not feel like I'm drowning with every passing second, I'll do it.

I'll let him go.

Another letter shows up a week later. I sit in my room with a spare lunch pail and a box of matches, determined to follow through with the promise I've made to myself. It takes letting four matches in a row burn down to the point they scorch my fingers before I realize that maybe I'm not as good at letting go as I'd convinced myself I would be. I don't open it. I don't look for more than a second at my name in his handwriting for fear of remembering what his voice sounds like wrapped around it. I shove the sealed envelope in my trumpet case and shove it under my bed. Out of sight, out of mind. It can't take too long for "out of heart" to follow.

Another week, another letter. Reeling, I choke on my breath until my trumpet case slams shut on top of it, decide to keep busy to take my mind off of the ache rising in the marrow of my bones. I ask Nettie if she wants to go out and play catch. She storms back the hallway with teary eyes and slams her bedroom door so hard the whole house shakes.

A week after that, I'm the one who goes out to the mailbox, knowing what to expect. I call Eren and ask if he needs me for an overtime shift. He doesn't, but I think he must hear the desperation in my voice, decide that me holding onto my sanity is worth a little of his money.

Weeks. Letters. Ninette goes back to school at the beginning of September, rides out with me in the morning and sits on the workbench in the garage after she gets out of class. Eren starts teaching her about cars, letting her bring him different tools and parts, and one afternoon she laughs for the first time in a month as he lifts her up over the open hood of a car and lets her turn a bolt the wrong way, dousing them both in a spray of motor oil. At home, my trumpet case barely latches anymore, paper corners sticking out the seam of the lid. I re-stack them carefully and bind them with rubber bands. They fit more neatly once I've got them condensed, wrapped in rubber bands and shoved into the darkest corner I can find.

The new ones are carefully filed, stored in chronological order. The hospital throws a big benefit gala, and even though It's been ages and I'm out of practice, I knock back a few too many glasses of champagne and convince Mikasa to give me one dance when the band starts playing Benny Goodman. She laughs when I twirl her around and then blames the lapse in her stoicism on being punch-drunk, kisses my cheek and wanders off to talk to some of the other nurses. I smile for the first time in what feels like an eternity.

One letter a week. It becomes part of my routine, a little weekly reminder of what I could have had that hurts until I tuck it away. It's almost symbolic, gives me something tangible to hold, a real little box of secrets to hide away and dissociate from myself.

Four months after Eren burns the first one, they stop coming.

I don't allow myself to think about what that means, shove my trumpet case even further under my bed and throw myself into work and helping Nettie with her homework and taking Mikasa out a few times a week, try my best to sink down in the life I've built for myself so I can stop floating towards the light that's growing dimmer and more distant by the day. They say that drowning is the most painful way to die there is, at first, but after a moment the body relaxes and it's actually quite peaceful, drifting off in the cool quiet beneath the waves. At the beginning, I told myself I would let him go because I felt like I was drowning in my fight to hold on. Now, I'm just waiting impatiently for the water to fill up my lungs and drag me down.

I want complacency. I want my scripted life and the predictable security that comes with it. I want it because I've proven to myself that I can't have anything else.

Over Thanksgiving dinner, Mom asks me if I've put any thought into saving up money for a ring. I choke on a mouthful of potatoes and Ninette laughs.

Of course, I tell her, thinking of how much of a better liar I've become now that the biggest lie I've ever told is stuffed under my bed and everything else pales in comparison. Of course I've been thinking about it. Just testing the waters.

Just waiting for the right time to breathe them in.

December in Texas isn't cold. If anything, it's the closest thing to pleasant weather we get, the stifling air of summer cooling off to being simply arid, gentle breezes that blow ever-changing shapes into the dunes of dust. Almost two months since my last letter, and I try to keep from counting the days, tell myself that I've finally let it end, that this is the part where I'm supposed to feel grounded. Forget that most nights I wake up breathless, feeling like I'm in freefall with two syllables clinging to my lips that sear like fire running down my throat.

My family ends up over at the Jaegers' for Christmas luncheon - the first time I've had _luncheon_ apply to any of my meals since I was living in a mansion downtown - the parents sitting inside talking amongst themselves while the rest of us escape from the table as quickly as possible to get outside. Eren chases Nettie around the dried-up remnants of a yard between the house and the barn, the two of them kicking up clouds of dust and Nettie letting out a shriek when Eren catches her around the waist and throws her over his shoulder, hollering something about it being his job to catch ornery Kirschteins and put them in their place.

"Your mother's gonna skin those two both alive when she sees the state of Ninette's dress," Mikasa hums almost boredly, stretched out across the porch swing with her head in my lap, high heels dangling gracefully off her toes where her ankles stretch over the opposite armrest.

"Trust me, she's got cleaning Nettie's dresses down to a science," I laugh, running a hand absently through her silky hair and watching Eren turn my sister loose just to give her a five-second head start and take off after her again. I wish this could all feel as peaceful as it's supposed to, but it's a start. I'm trying.

Her hand comes up and presses against my jawline, turning my head until I'm looking back down at her. "You seem happy. Happier."

"Is that so strange that it merits commentary?"

"I guess," Mikasa shrugs, running the pad of her thumb across my cheekbone before letting her hand drop back to rest on her stomach, still watching me carefully. "Not so long ago, you looked empty. Like your body was here but the rest of you was somewhere else. And there's still something missing now, but… you seem happier, Jean. And I'm glad. That's all."

"Guess I finally came to terms with who I'm supposed to be," I tell her, trying not to let that soft _there's still something missing_ wake up the carefully compacted truth in the hollow of my chest. There's still something missing, and part of me knows that putting a ring on her finger won't fix it, part of me knows that a lie can only be lived for so long and that my heart can never fully learn to rest here, I know, I _know,_ but I've been trying. I'll keep trying, even if it means skating around truths I'm not even sure I know and-

"Do you love me?" I ask before I'm even sure of what I'm saying, watching Ninette sucker-punch Eren so hard that he drops her and she takes off running again.

Mikasa blinks.

"Not really, no," she says, reaching up and ghosting delicate fingertips across my forehead, sweeping my messy hair to the side. "At least, not in the way you're asking me if I do. But it's never been about us loving each other, Jean, I think we both know that."

"Do we?"

"I think you do. You just don't wanna admit it." Mikasa looks an awful mixture of weary and sad, eyes so dark that I can see my own reflection in them. She sighs softly, grabbing my hand. "And I think that you don't realize."

I frown and ask her, "Realize what?"

"The effect that you have on people," she replies, the corner of her mouth quirking upwards. "Back in school, you ran that pack of boys, Armin and Samuel and the rest of them. And you never saw it, how they all looked at you. You could have convinced them to do anything."

"Bah," I snort, shaking my head. I've never been any sort of leader. I'm too busy trying to figure out whether I want to keep my head above water or let the waves drag me down.

"No, really." With a little huff of effort, Mikasa sits up, brushing her skirt into place and combing out the tangles I unintentionally caused by playing with her hair. "When she thought we weren't around to hear, Carla would always say, 'Thank God that Kirschtein boy is a good kid. He could tell Eren to jump off a bridge and he'd take a flying leap.' And he would have. He still would. That's what you don't realize. I don't think you've ever seen the extents that people will go to for you."

"I don't understand what this has to do with us," I admit, deciding that at least here, honesty is the best policy.

"No," says Mikasa, watching Eren kneel down to help Nettie brush the dust off her dress. "No, I don't suppose you do. But that's all right. You don't have to."

"So, does this mean you wanna break things off, or…"

"On the contrary." Shaking her head, she stands up, sliding gracefully back into her heels and leaning down to give me a brisk kiss on the cheek. "Carla and your mom both want a June wedding. I think that sounds lovely."

I spend the entire drive home turning the conversation over and over in my head, and I still can't figure out what she meant.

"Oh, Jean, sweetie," Mom flags me down before I can retreat into my room, standing on tiptoe to swipe dust off my collar and smiling serenely. "You got something in the mail yesterday, I forgot to tell you, I was in such a rush getting everything wrapped. It's on the counter."

My heart goes leaden, drops into my feet and out through the soles of my shoes and plummets down to the center of the earth. Not now. Not this.

I move into the kitchen like I'm in a dream, shaking fingers turning the envelope over. My name and address, the same handwriting, but this time it's sharp and wobbly, as if written by a shaking hand.

"Honey? What is it?"

"Christmas card from the Arlerts," I choke, the lie bitter in my mouth. "They say California's beautiful and they send their love. I'm… I'll be in my room."

Nothing short of a miracle allows me to make it to my bedroom and shut the door behind me before I'm curled up in the center of my bed wheezing, everything I've let settle rearing back up and looming over me. It never left. I just taught myself to ignore it. My whole body shakes like the last autumn leaf clinging desperately to its branch.

"Put it away," I whisper to myself. The handwriting is so different. He was shaking as hard as I am now when he wrote it.

"Just put it away." Two months of nothing, and now this. "Put it away, put it away, put it-"

The sharp rip of the top of the envelope sounds like gunfire in the silence of my room, the rattle of the paper inside the thunder heralding an oncoming storm. Mikasa was right. There's still something missing, and I feel it slide into place the moment I see a shaky _Dear Jean_ at the top of the page.

_I know that you don't owe me anything. You've got more right than most to hate me for all of this. I tried not to be too sad when you didn't write back because I knew what I'd done, knew that you probably wouldn't want to have anything to do with me._

_You're the last person I should be asking for a favor, but I'm out of options._

_I know I've asked before, and that the answer's probably still no, but I need to see you. If you could just come down to Eastham on a weekend sometime soon, just give me five minutes, that's all I ask for. I'm not even asking anymore. I'm begging._

_Please. If we ever had anything that meant something to you, please come. This is my last-ditch effort. Whether or not you show up, I won't bother you again._

_I don't expect you to forgive me. But you're a better person than I am. I hope that means I'll see you soon._

_-M_

"What the hell," I whisper, staring down at the words scratched out by his trembling hand for long, oppressively quiet minutes. "What the _hell_."

Something's wrong. I feel it in every particle of myself.

"Mom!" I shout, shoving the paper under my pillow and sticking my head out into the hallway.

"Yes?"

"Today was Friday, right?"

"Yes, why?"

"No reason," I respond softly, looking at the edge of my trumpet case sticking out from under my bed. "I've just got the day off tomorrow, is all."

I spend that night dreaming about being underwater, clawing my way to the surface. I have never wanted to drown. A peaceful death still means you're dead in the end, and I swore to him that I wanted to live.

It's a long, dusty drive from Dallas to Eastham prison farm. My truck nearly gives up and dies twice on the way down, I get lost three times, and the sky looks dark and threatening like there's a dust storm brewing. It seems like every force of nature and fate is trying to keep me from getting there, and that only puts me more on edge.

Mom thinks I'm with Mikasa, Mikasa is covering for me to both her family and mine, and I'm facing down the prospect of being stranded on the side of the road two hours from home in a dead truck. I've played worse odds before.

After a long session of staring at a map in a gas station, I manage to find the right road, winding down thin packed-dirt paths until I see the first of the guard towers poking over the horizon. This place means business. The fields that make up the farm part of the prison farm are barren, would be in December even if we weren't in the middle of the worst drought in known history, the perimeters fenced in and crowned with deadly-looking razor wire. Guard towers everywhere, officers with rifles pacing back and forth inside of them. Long, squat buildings, bars on windows. The whole place reeks of despair.

God, he's been here for six months. He'll be here for sixteen years. My stomach turns at the thought.

I park outside a door marked 'reception' in peeling paint, wander inside feeling terribly out of place. A fat cop sitting with his heels kicked up on a desk looks up from his newspaper, dropping the donut he's halfway finished eating once he gets a good look at me. "I'll be goddamned. You actually showed up."

"Uh…" I start, shifting nervously back and forth. "Was I supposed to be here sooner?"

"Weedy kid with blonde hair, drives an old clunker of a truck, answers to Jean?" Caught off-guard, I stammer and tilt my head to the side. The cop just laughs. "Son, he's been tryin' to get you down here since August. Come on back."

Since August. All those unopened letters in my trumpet case back home, and each one has been another plea for me to come here. I feel sick.

"You're his brother-in-law, right? Live up 'round Dallas with his older sister?" The cop asks conversationally, like the grime and anguish around him has no effect. An ancient metal grate clunks and creaks on its hinges as he unlocks it, leading me from the administrative area into what looks like the actual prison, empty cells down one hallway and what looks to be an infirmary down another. He doesn't have any older sisters, but I just nod numbly, trying not to choke on the stench of sweat and rust. The cop just keeps babbling, oblivious. "Normally we've got a room for supervised visits, but he ain't gonna get up to no shenanigans with the state he's in. Hell, you'll be lucky to get two words outta him. Nah, you just wander on back to that door when you're done and someone'll escort you out."

"Okay."

He stops for a moment, gives me a sidelong glance. "You ain't never been in a prison in your life, have you, kid?"

"No, sir."

"Well, it goes without sayin' that we ain't got the most savory types here," he grimaces, hunching forward to unlock another door. "Just keep your head down and don't make eye contact. We've got him in a cell down around the corner, so once you run the gauntlet you should be fine."

"Wait, hold on, what gauntlet-"

The door swings open, and I don't get time to finish asking the question, following orders and gluing my eyes to the floor as I move forward. It's noisy, the sound of slamming metal and clashing voices, but I try to let it all fade into background clamor, one foot in front of the other.

"Hey, boss, is that a new 'un?"

"Look here, boys, just when we thought we was gettin' bored!"

"Speak for yourself; that one looks so skinny he'll snap in half the first time anyone-"

"Shut it, you lot!" the cop shouts, banging a billy club against the nearest set of bars, and even in the subsequent quiet I feel two stuttered heartbeats for throwing up, every instinct I have screaming at me to turn around and run. My escort just huffs and tugs me along, shaking his head. "Disgusting. All right, it's down here around the corner. Like I said, good luck gettin' anything from him."

The hallway around the corner is almost entirely empty cells, save for one, an emaciated, huddled form wrapped in a threadbare blanket leaning back against the bars, a tuft of blackish hair sticking up over the worn fabric. Oh God. Oh _God._

"Oh God," I whisper, checking to make sure the cop is gone before I kneel on the other side of the cell door, reaching in to rest my hand on his shoulder. "Oh God, Marco."

It's the first time I've said his name since July. It sits as easily on my tongue as it ever did.

He lunges away from the touch so quickly that he almost blurs out of my vision, sucking in a ragged breath and whipping around as he clambers back frantically across the dirty concrete. His cheeks are sunken and pale, the tan shade of his freckled skin that I remember gone in favor of a sickly pallor that stands in sharp contrast to the black eye and bruised jaw that color his face into a mottled canvas of blues and purples and yellow-greens. But it's his eyes that hold the most damage, wide and dark with visceral terror that I've only seen in the faces of hunted animals.

He's been trying to get me down here since August.

"What's happened to you?" I breathe, and it doesn't strike me until the words are already gone that I don't really want to know.

A few seconds pass with nothing but the background noise of the cell block to fill the silence between us, his eyes the only two bright spots in the shadowed corner where he's huddled. And then, slowly, cautiously, he leans forward, a glance darting back over his shoulder with every inch he moves.

"J-Jean?" His voice cracks, dry and unused, the disbelief in it jamming between my ribs like a white-hot blade. He shuffles forward another foot or so, swallowing heavily before he tries to talk again. "Jean?"

"Yeah, it's me. I'm here." I nod, trying to cough around the thickness in my throat, but before I have time to do anything Marco's back at the cell door again, head bowed and shoulders heaving as he reaches out through the bars and presses shaking hands to the sides of my face, both his arms bruised all the way up to where they disappear beneath the blanket.

"Y-you came," he practically sobs, pulling me forward until our foreheads touch, a watery smile stretching across his beat-up face. His teeth flash bloody in the dim overhead lights. "You actually c-came, oh God, I missed you so much, darlin', you actually _came…_"

"Shh, hey, it's okay." It's reflex for my arms to wrap around him, but he stiffens when my hands settle against his shoulderblades, won't relax until I'm not touching his back anymore. "It's okay. You're okay."

A lie. He's beat half-dead and looks back over his shoulder every few seconds, moves like every part of him is hurting. But he's here, he's tangible beneath my fingers in a way that's something other than the pages of unopened letters, and that missing piece I've been ignoring is finally back where it belongs.

I was a fool to think I could ever know contentment after him.

Marco shakes his head around a gurgling laugh, rough fingertips still tracing the lines of my cheekbones and jaw like he's not sure I'm actually here. "I ain't nowhere close to okay. But I'm better now."

Frowning, I reach up and rest my hands over his, thumbs brushing the chapped surface of his knuckles. "This is awful. There's no way that treating you like this is any sort of legal, there has to be someone you can tell-"

"Shhhhh!" His eyes go wide, terror flashing hazel in his irises as he claps a hand over my mouth and looks hurriedly side to side. "Don't let anyone hear you sayin' that shit. If you rat on someone in here you're dead."

I yank his hand away, checking again to make sure the coast is clear before turning back and hissing "I can't just do nothin', not when-"

"I gotta get outta here, Jean." Everything in him is sheer desperation, fists clenching in the fabric of my shirt, breaths coming in quick gasps. "I won't last sixteen years in here. I won't even last one. I know I got no right to ask you for help, but-"

"What do you need me to do?" There hasn't been an option of me walking away since I saw him huddled in the corner, wounded and scared. My shot at normalcy went out the window the day I met him, and leaving him to this fate now won't help get it back. I don't have any certainty in my life anymore. Everything is falling and I have nothing left to cling to, nothing except the fact that I refuse to leave him.

Marco lets out a breathy, relieved little laugh, rocking back on his heels. "There's a gun. Under a loose floorboard on Connie and Sasha's porch, there's a revolver and a box of bullets. If you can get those to me, I can hide 'em until they come around to do bed check and get out."

"That's it?"

"What, askin' you to sneak an unregistered gun into a prison for a convicted felon, aid his escape, and risk gettin' put in here yourself?" he scoffs, scrubbing a hand down the side of his face that isn't covered by the black eye. "Yeah, that's about it."

"Fine. I'll be here tomorrow." There's no time to balk at the idea, no time to think about what I heard on the way back here and imagine living it. Fear is a paralytic. But what I feel right now, looking at him, touching him for the first time in months and letting him back under my skin where he belongs, that's a catalyst.

"You can say no. You don't have to do this."

"What is it with you and tryin' to talk me out of things after I've agreed to them?" I snap, raking a hand through my hair with a frustrated growl. "You don't get to sit there lookin' like that and tell me to just leave you. Go to hell, Marco."

"Halfway there, darlin'."

"God, you little…" Even with bloodstained teeth and swollen lips, his Cheshire Cat smile still looks the same. Cursing under my breath, I tug him forward and kiss him as gently as I'm able to, ignoring the veneer of sticky copper on my lips when I pull away. If anything, he just grins wider, settling back against the bars like he'd been when I walked up to the cell. "I'll see you tomorrow."

I'm halfway back to the corner when Marco calls out, "Hey, Jean."

"Yeah?"

"I…" He starts, but lapses into silence, waiting a beat before he finds his words again. "I'm glad you came. I'll try not to get shanked between now and tomorrow."

Grumbling, I stalk back to the cell, leaning down and glaring at him. "Don't even joke about that. I gotta go. I love you."

Marco whips around, blinking with eyes wide as dinner plates. "Yeah? When did that happen?"

"About six months ago. Don't get cocky."

"Too late for that, darlin'," he laughs even as I make a flustered little noise and retreat around the corner, his voice cutting over the clamor of the cell block. "Way too late for that."

The plan I come up with is simple enough, made simpler by the fact that I spend most of the night lying awake once I'm back in Dallas and thinking about it until a fitful sleep finally claims me.

When morning rolls around, I mummify myself in blankets and tell Mom I feel sick, ask her to tell Eren for me and lie in bed groaning feebly until the Wagners swing by to pick her and Nettie up for church. As soon as the sound of their car fades off at the end of the road, I'm up and moving, washing up and changing into fresh clothes, throwing the dirty ones on the bed before going through the rest of the house like I'm on the hunt for buried treasure. A few more of my oil-stained work shirts, some of Ninette's more battle-scarred dresses, and soon enough I've got a good-sized pile shoved into the bag I'd originally packed back in August, the rumpled fabric shoved over folded clothes and closed up in a rush.

They'll be at church for an hour, maybe lunch afterwards, and it's a half-hour drive back home. Two and a half hours at my absolute luckiest.

Halfway to the truck, I stop, turn around. There's no need for it, not really. I'm wasting time standing here thinking about it.

"Dammit," I hiss, turning on my heel and running back to my room to grab my trumpet case from under the bed and hauling it out to throw in the truck with everything else. Safe is better than sorry, and somehow feels like poetic justice that I'm bringing my little box of secrets along with me as I craft the biggest one I'll ever keep.

The Springers' screen door swings open on my second knock, Sasha wiping her hands off on her apron as she looks up at me, confused. "Jean Kirschtein? Ain't seen you in a month of Sundays."

"Mornin', Mrs. Springer," I nod, trying for a winning smile. I'm not the best at buttering people up, a little too blunt for my own good, but for the sake of the plan I do my best to channel Marco, leaning in the doorway and feeling a crooked grin settle on my lips. "And might I add that you look radiant."

"You're sweet," she laughs, brushing stray hairs back from her face and stepping out onto the porch. "Did you swing by just to smooth-talk me, or is there something you need?"

"Actually." It takes a little tugging to get all the clothes out of the bag, presenting the pile to her like some sort of shoddily-wrapped Christmas gift. "Mom can't quite get the stains outta these. My little sister goes through dresses like a hot knife through butter, but with funds the way they are…"

"Don't I know it," Sasha huffs, picking up the hem of one of the dresses to squint at the dirt rubbed into the fabric. "I think I can save these. If I go at 'em the old fashioned way with a washboard and lye soap, it should come right out."

"I remember when you used to starch my school uniforms for me," I tell her, shifting back and forth and praying for her to just take the stuff inside already. "Every Thursday I'd drive down with Mom to pick 'em up. They always looked so nice."

"Yeah, well, my operation's a little more understated ever since Mom and Dad lost the dry cleaner's," she smiles a little sadly, taking the pile of clothes out of my arms. "I'd normally say fifty cents for this, but I'll write it off."

"Are you sure? I got the money right here-"

"Don't worry 'bout it, sugar." Waving me off, she ducks back through the door, carrying the load of clothes back through the living room. "I'll have these done by dinnertime, just swing by when you can."

As soon as she disappears around a corner, I drop to the floor, hands scrabbling. My earlier nervous shifting served a dual purpose, feet mapping out the floorboards until I found one that rattled and creaked when I put weight on it. It's hard for me to wiggle my fingers into the narrow seam, whispering a stream of curses, but the board gives and flips up after a second, a cloud of dust rising in its wake. In the hollow space under the porch, there's a worn-out old cookie tin sitting in the dirt, heavy and rattling when I pick it up. Heart hammering, I stomp the loose floorboard back into place and hightail it back to my truck, not able to breathe until I'm well past the end of the road.

The garage is closed the way it always is before noon on Sundays when I pull up, turning off my engine in front of the shop and letting my head fall back against the top of my seat with a long exhalation. I pulled off steps one and two. Now, the hard part starts.

The cookie tin is old and a little rusted, stubborn when I try to yank off the lid until it finally pops with a loud, metallic snap. Sitting inside is a cardboard box of bullets and a Colt revolver. The taste of bile settles thick along the backs of my teeth.

_Blood everywhere, seeping out under the door of the study and police sirens and Mom screaming until her voice gives out. Ninette cries and tugs my sleeve and says she doesn't understand and neither do I, Nettie, I tell her, neither do I. He didn't leave a note and he didn't leave a goddamn cent for us to get by on, just left more blood on the carpet than I thought a human body could hold and a smoking Colt revolver._

Now is not the time. I swallow hard, shove the memories back and fight the urge to throw up as I shove the bullets in my pocket and reach gingerly into the cookie tin for the gun. I've never held a pistol in my life. The only time I've ever even been near a gun was wrapping shaking hands around a rifle when Dad tried to take me hunting with his business pals; I was maybe ten or eleven. I didn't have the stomach for it, couldn't stand all the blood and clapped my hands over my ears when the deer went down with a wounded scream. Dad clapped me on the back afterwards and told me that I was a man now.

The next time a hunting trip came around, I got conveniently ill.

The Colt feels heavier in my hand than it looks, the polished wood handle and brushed metal somehow managing to package up death and make it look elegant. I tuck it into my waistband before I get out of the car, and the cold steel against my skin steals every scrap of air from my lungs. One foot in front of the other. What happened two years ago is done. What happens today depends on me.

I unlock one of the garage doors and roll it up with a wince, hoping the rattle didn't make it out to the street. It's dark and musty inside, but I could find my way around the place blind, hands skating over parked cars and the workbench until my grip closes around the stiff edge of a tarp and yanks, exposing the long-forgotten Model T in a cloud of dust. Eren refused to sell a stolen car, and I couldn't bring it home without answering too many questions, and so here it sat. There's nothing in my mind but a constant plea that it hasn't sat too long as I pull the keys out of the glove compartment and stick them in the ignition, turning and muttering "Please, please, please."

My truck is temperamental about making the trip to Eastham to begin with and will do forty-five miles an hour at an all-out sprint. If things go wrong, I need a real car. Something you could smuggle hooch in, fast and reliable. Marco said something once about Al Capone's empire being build on the floorboards of the Ford Model T. Here's hoping it wasn't complete bullshit.

The engine turns over with an absolute _purr,_ and I rest my head against the steering wheel with a wavering laugh, easing the car out of the garage before hopping out to transfer my stuff from the truck, lock the place up again, and take one long, last look at the place. No use prolonging the inevitable.

I hop back in the car and head up the road, putting the engine through its paces before I'm even out of town. I don't leave a note, don't leave an apology, just leave an empty garage and empty bed.

Maybe the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree after all.

The trip to Eastham goes faster with the better car and the knowledge of where I'm going, but it seems too easy, nervousness sparking electric in my bones and setting my teeth on edge. By the time I park the car in front of the reception door, I'm nothing but tremors, swallowing gasps of terror when I walk inside. It's not the same cop from yesterday working the desk. This one's younger, skinnier, and looks to be in much more of a foul mood when I check in, hollering something down the hall about getting one of the visitation rooms ready before he scratches something out on a clipboard.

"Wait, what?" I choke.

"Standard procedure, kid."

Shit.

"But I was just here yesterday and I-"

"Yeah, well, Wald's two months from retirement and don't give a shit about policy. I like my job, so you'll be gettin' patted down and escorted to a visitation room."

_Shit._

I didn't plan for this. My knees start to buckle, and my head rushes into white noise, the sound of my heartbeat loud in my ears.

Somehow, I've ended up pointing a gun at him. How strange.

"I think I'll be headed back to the cell block, actually." There's a level, placid sort of calm that settles over me, a clarity that lets me trace the progression of fear across the cop's face as he realizes what's going on. Fuck, I hope I'm holding this thing right. "Go on. And don't try anything stupid."

Because, you know. I'm not trying anything stupid. I know exactly what I'm doing.

The cell block goes deadly quiet when they all see me marching the guard back through the dim hallway, a few shocked murmurs the only distraction from the hum of the overhead lights and the rhythm of our footfalls. Every breath seems sharp and focused, like breathing in ice, the world in sharp relief. I am hyper-aware. Is this what being alive actually is?

Is this what he feels all the time?

Marco's curled up in the corner of his cell again, doesn't stir until I clear my throat. He turns around, smiling when he sees me until the rest of the image sinks home and he lets out a dismayed groan. "You were s'posed to _sneak the gun in_, genius."

"Yeah, well." Shrugging, I prod the guard in the back with the business end of the Colt, every cell in my brain still firing on overdrive. "Go on, let him out."

"Jean, what the hell is this?" Marco asks, looking absolutely dumbfounded as the guard leans down to unlock the door.

"You said that you wanted to help me get out." My hands have stopped shaking. For the first time in recent memory, I'm not scared. "This is me. Gettin' out."

"And they said I was crazy," he snorts, yanking the guard into his cell as soon as the door's open and knocking his head hard against the bars. The guy goes down, still breathing, and Marco grabs the keys from his hands before stepping out and shutting the door behind him. "But you, Jean Kirschtein, are either the bravest or the most insane sonuvabitch I've met in my natural life."

"And you really wanna kiss me right now," I smirk.

"And I really wanna kiss you right now."

He pulls me in, hands splayed across the small of my back, kisses me so hard that my shiny-sharp world goes fuzzy for a few moments. Any possibility of a life outside of this is gone now, and not just because I've busted a felon out of prison with a stolen gun. I could never go back to Dallas after this. The person I'm supposed be died when I picked up the pistol in the garage parking lot, was buried when I pulled it on a man of the law. I can't go back there as the person I am.

The fact that I don't have a choice feels much better than it should. I hook the thumb of my free hand behind the hinge of Marco's jaw and kiss him back until the old me is down so deep that I'll never see him again.

He pulls back sharply, our lips disconnecting with a wet pop, and frowns down at the gun in my other hand. "Hold up, do you have the safety on that thing turned on?"

"Uh…" I don't even know where the safety is.

"Wait, Jean, did you even _load_ it?"

Shit.

"Oh for the love of…" Marco rolls his eyes, grabbing the gun out of my hand. "Give me that."

I laugh a little nervously, reaching into my pocket and holding out a handful of ammunition. "Bullets?"

"I cannot _believe-_"

"D'you really wanna stand here and argue about this, or would you prefer to leave?!"

"Yeah. Leave. I'd rather leave," he says, shaking his head slightly and taking off down the hall in the opposite direction of the cell block door.

"Uh, Marco?" He's too busy loading the gun and mumbling to himself to pay me any mind, eyes sharp and focused straight ahead. He looks like himself again. Too bad 'himself' is a reckless idiot who probably won't make the best decisions given this situation.

"Bustin' into a state prison with an _unloaded gun,_ holding the place up with the fuckin' safety on, I done seen everything now..."

"Marco!" I get an exasperated look in response, but at least he stops, turning around and spreading his arms in a questioning gesture. "Ain't the front door that way?"

"Yeah, 'course, just let me waltz out the front door in a prison uniform; I'm sure the boys in the guard towers'll let us go with no issue." Oh. Six months of hell, and he's still a better strategist than I am. "We gotta go this way. Evidence locker."

He's obviously been studying the layout of the place, whipping around corners and ducking through side doors almost faster than I can follow, silent as a shadow. I don't miss the way his finger rests over the trigger guard of the revolver, try to think of something else as we move further I can to the bowels of the prison. My plan didn't include anyone dying today, but it also didn't include me getting dragged into a full scale prison break as anything more than an accessory.

Marco stops outside a seemingly innocuous door, gives me a long look before he kicks in and strides over the threshold like he owns the place. Cursing, I dive after him just in time to see him pointing the gun straight in the face of a rightfully terrified guard, a sly smirk curling at his bruised lips. "Afternoon, officer. Marco Bodt, arrived in July, checkin' out early. I'd like my effects, if you don't mind."

The guy practically trips over himself to yank a brown paper bag out of a wall lined with wooden cubbies, handing it over with trembling hands.

"Thank you," Marco smiles sweetly just before he tosses the gun up, grabs it out of the air by the barrel, and cracks the grip across the guard's jaw so hard that the snap of wood on bone bounces off the walls.

My jaw drops just about as fast as the guard does, eyes wide and mouth slack around a whispered "Jesus Christ."

Marco just shrugs, digging a shirt, pants and suspenders out of the bag. "He ain't dead. He'll just have a hell of a headache when he wakes up. Go over there and make sure no one's coming down the hall."

I stammer out some unintelligible response, still shell-shocked, the last thing I see before I go to stick my head out the door the pained expression on Marco's face, wincing as he yanks his shirt off over his head to reveal more dark bruises across his ribs, a long trail down his side where you can almost see the imprints of the boots that put them there. Since August. He tried since August to reach me, and I tucked the letters away and lived my life and left him to this.

Fear's a paralytic, love's a catalyst, and guilt is corrosive. I can practically feel myself being eaten away.

"Well would you look at that," he says from behind me, and I turn around to watch him placing that worn-out old newsboy cap on his head almost reverently, tilting it off-center with a little laugh that sends a shiver down my spine. "Silver lining."

"You can go all dizzy over your new threads once we get you outta jail," I tell him, trying to direct my attention to anything but the way the corners of his mouth turn up, feral and almost _hungry_ as he moves across the room with a mountain lion's predatory grace, drawing up behind me and smiling against the side of my neck.

"Don't be so tense," he chuckles, one hand skating down my arm while the one loosely gripping the Colt settles on my hip. "We're gonna walk outta here. We'll be gone for hours before anyone knows. They'll be talkin' about this one for years."

"So let's do it already." Before the blood flow moving rapidly away from my brain makes me pass out, preferably.

"Fine, fine," Marco sighs, pressing a kiss to the angle of my jaw and twirling the stolen keys around his finger. "You're no fun. C'mon, there's a service door down this hallway."

The sun is bright and blinding when we emerge into the dusty prison yard. I have trouble orienting myself, but even after months inside Marco seems to know exactly where he's going, sticking to the shadows of the doorframe until the guard in the nearest tower turns around, dragging me around a corner and back to the front side of the building.

"Don't look so stiff," he hisses, eyes doing a slow back-and-forth sweep of the yard as we move. No one walking around outside, and the person who's supposed to be in reception is locked up in Marco's cell right now. We're lucky. We're so goddamn lucky considering the circumstances, and that only makes me more nervous. "Anyone stops us, we're on our way back from dropping off our brother. Stupid kid got picked up for breaking and entering again. A real kleptomaniac. Ma tried with him, God rest her soul."

"How d'you make up lies so fast?"

"Lots of practice and a pinch of natural talent. Where's your truck parked?"

"I brought the Model T, actually," I mumble, tugging him towards the car and reaching for the keys with shaking fingers.

"Who'd have thought a mechanic from West Dallas'd have the balls to roll down here on stolen wheels and bust me out with my old .45," he laughs, climbing into the passenger seat and watching me with that same almost-hungry look as I start the engine. "You're a regular epitome of moral decay, Jean Kirschtein."

"How eloquent. Been readin' Oscar Wilde in your cell again?"

"Norse mythology, actually. Fascinating stuff. Drive slow. They won't stop you if you don't look like you're in a rush."

The next few minutes pass in tense silence, nothing but the sound of the engine and Marco telling me which way to turn once we're out the main gate, guiding me through a narrow maze of backroads until we're sitting at the edge of one that's actually paved.

"Which way?" I ask, drumming my fingers anxiously on the wheel.

"I love you too, y'know," he says.

I blink once, twice. "That's nice. Are we going north or south?"

"Jean." Before I can turn around and beg him to save it for later, he's pulling me in by the shirt collar and pressing his lips to mine, a small smile against my mouth and a touch that's almost tender, callused fingertips tracing nonsensical patterns across the nape of my neck. "You had every reason to let me rot in that place, and you got me out. You walked into a state prison and walked out with a fugitive in tow, and I swear to _God_ if you're still scared of me sayin' I love you after that, you really gotta re-examine your priorities."

"I ain't scared of that," I say, so soft it's more of a breath than a whisper.

"Then what are you scared of?"

"I'm scared 'cause I don't know where we go from here," I croak, hands shaking even after I grip the steering wheel hard in an effort to still them. "I'm scared because I just broke about ten different laws and I'm about to break a hundred more and I'm scared because I _want to_ and because I want this and you and I'm fuckin' scared because I don't know whether to turn right or left, okay, Marco, so just tell me!"

His hand slips down to the nape of my neck, thumb brushing the rise of my spine where it slopes down between my shoulders. "Go right."

I do. And we drive. And it's quiet.

"All right. So what do we do next?" I ask after a couple more miles, still driving slow even though we're well out of sight of the prison.

Marco gives me his best Cheshire cat smile, reaching down and resting his hand over mine where it's sitting on the gearshift. The touch alone makes me feel like I've gotten an answer.

"We raise hell. Floor it, darlin'. I wanna see what this old pile of tin can do."


	13. Chapter 13 - Marco

"_But why can't I go?!"_

_The sun outside the barn is nothing short of blistering, the worn fabric of a thrice-handed-down shirt sticking between my shoulders and the patches of exposed skin starting to burn but I don't _care,_ buoyed by some sort of righteous rage that makes me bigger than what my hatefully little body can contain._

"_Because you're a kid, Marco," Miles sighs, saddling up his horse and barely even looking at me. That's what happens when you're the youngest of six brothers. You're the annoyance. The inconvenience. The one under everyone's feet. They push you to the sidelines and try to forget you._

_Not today._

"_I ain't a kid! I'm eleven; that's old enough! Michael's going and he's only a year older than me!" I protest, kicking angrily at the dusty floorboards and scowling at my oldest brother. Miles probably doesn't even remember what it's like to be eleven and so much smaller than your dreams, eighteen and six-foot-something with an accepted application to start training for the Texas Rangers next year. I might as well be talking to a brick wall._

"_I get to go 'cause I blackmailed Miles and threatened to tell Pa I saw him sneakin' off with Emily the other day if he didn't talk him into letting me go," Michael calls from a few yards away, sharp features curled into a smirk as he crosses the barn tossing an apple back and forth between his hands._

_Miles rolls his eyes, reaching over the stall door to smack Michael upside the back of the head as he swaggers out of the barn with a laugh. Grumbling, he lifts a hand to brush back dark curls I'm surprised Ma hasn't chewed him out for not cutting yet and says, "Michael's going 'cause we need an extra set of hands, and it'll be hard enough keepin' an eye on him without throwing you into the mix."_

"_I won't be a pain, honest! I can help!"_

_He just shakes his head, still not even bothering to look at me. Behind us, the barn door rattles open, a wave of heat rolling in from outside in the wake of Maddox and Matthew walking in with coils of rope slung over their shoulders, identical faces sprayed with identical freckles and mouths curved into perpetual, identical smirks. Matt stops, blinks, tilts his head. "What's all the ruckus?"_

"_Marco wants to go on the cattle drive," Miles sighs, the same tone of voice Ma uses when she talks about foxes getting into the henhouse again._

"_So?" Maddox shrugs. "Let him."_

"_Yeah, let me!"_

"_Cattle drives are _dangerous,_ Marco." Like I didn't know that, like I haven't been paying attention to it my whole life. With an exasperated sigh, Miles finally deigns to look at me, leaning on one of the stall's support posts and grimacing around the cigarette perched in one corner of his mouth. "I went on one when I wasn't too much older than you, wandered off and got lost for four nights and five days. Almost died."_

_Which, of course, only serves to make me more excited, clambering up to sit on top of the stall door and gaping up at him with wide eyes. "Woah, really? What happened?"_

"_I don't remember."_

"_Aw, bullshi-"_

"_Watch your mouth," says Miles, flicking the side of my head and trying to fight back a smile. "But really, I was starving and dehydrated by the time Pa found me. A lot of it's blurry. And the stuff I can remember, well… I don't really wanna remember it."_

"_Hey, Marco, wanna know a secret?" Matt snickers, coming back out of the tack room and walking over to ruffle my hair. "If you wanna get him to talk about it, you gotta get him drunk first."_

"_Yeah, then he won't shut up about his big heroic adventure," Maddox chimes in, leading his horse behind him with a grin. "Because nothin' enchants the ladies like talkin' about drinking your own piss-"_

_Miles shuts the twins up with a glare that could melt steel, and right there, right now, it's easy to see why he's going to be a lawman. It's not just being the oldest that makes people want to listen to him. It's something in the way that he carries himself, something unspoken that I can only sit there with my useless eleven years of life experience and envy. People see him. They notice him. I've always wanted that, but there's something about the idea of putting on a badge and answering to a chain of command to get it that's never sat well with me. But hell, I can't even talk my way into a cattle drive. At this rate, I don't have much of a future to worry about._

"_Why don't you two go help Martin with the tents and actually do something useful 'stead of bumpin' your gums?" The twins disappear almost disturbingly fast. Grumbling under his breath, Miles lifts me up off the stall door and sets me down so he can lead his horse out, squatting down once he does so that our eyes are level. "I'll talk to Pa and see if you can go on the next one. But it ain't gonna happen this time."_

"_Why d'you not wanna remember what happened?" Easily distracted, I keep pressing the issue even after the others are gone, smoothing the hair that Matt rumpled up back into place._

"'_Cause it ain't pretty," Miles sighs, standing back up and ruffling my hair all over again. "Sometimes when bad things happen, it's best not to think about 'em. You take stuff outta your nightmares and dwell on it, and it'll drive you crazy."_

"_So you just block it out?"_

"_You keep livin', Marco," he says, climbing up into the saddle and squinting out the barn door. "That's the only choice you really got. Keep livin' or don't. That's why you shouldn't go on one of these drives 'til you're older. You're too young to have to make that kinda choice. If I had my way, you'd never have to make it at all."_

"_I just wanna get off this damn farm," I grumble, crossing my arms over my chest._

"_You will someday, kid. And I ain't gonna tell you to watch that mouth again."_

"_What's the holdup in here?" A long shadow falls across the door in time with a sliver of ice jabbing downwards through my spine despite the oppressive heat._

"_Nothin', Pa. I was letting Marco help me clean up before we left," Miles covers flawlessly, not even a blink to give away the lie, and I wonder for a moment if his talents are really best served upholding justice._

_But my father sees through bullshit with an eagle eye, stares the both of us down from the saddle of his Pinto before his scrutiny finally settles on me. I feel it crawling around under my skin, like he sees _everything,_ the desperate desire to get out and the sin of my ungratefulness and the sin of something much worse that I keep locked up tight behind clenched teeth while I pray to stop looking forward to going into town on Sundays because the grocer's son who's about my age has the prettiest blue eyes I've ever seen and my whole body feels hot every time I see him and-_

"_Ain't you s'posed to be in the house?"_

_My guts sink like lead. "Yes, Pa."_

"_Then why're you out here?"_

"_I… I wanted…"_

"_I told you to stay outta your brothers' way and go help your mother with Maura." I know that tone of voice, my whole body tensing up in anticipatory terror of him getting down off his horse, and God, do I wish I could run. "How am I s'posed to expect you to be the man of the house while we're gone if you can't even mind, Marco, I swear to-"_

"_It's my fault." I have to fight tooth and nail to keep from gaping disbelievingly up at Miles, who keeps a perfect poker face as he clicks his tongue and trots his horse out into the yard, swiping an arm across his forehead. "I stuck my head in the back door and asked him to come sweep out the tack room 'cause Martin didn't have time to do it this morning. I didn't know you'd told him to stay inside."_

_It's a blatant lie - I snuck out through the kitchen when Ma went upstairs to get Maura from her nap - but it's enough to defuse the situation. Pa nods at Miles stiffly before looking back at me, the danger in his gaze fading out to mere disapproval. "We'll be back in a week. Take care of your sister, mind your Ma, and stay outta trouble, you hear me?"_

"_Yes, Pa." Like I have a choice._

_I climb out onto the roof of the house through the attic to watch them all ride off, peeking over the rusty gutters as my father and my brothers disappear into vague blurs on the horizon. The closest to any excitement I'm ever likely to get. I scowl and grip the loose shingles, debating on jumping off just to feel the rush that would come before the broken bones._

"_Marco!" Ma yells from downstairs. Maura's crying again._

"_Be there in a minute!"_

_The sun's finally starting to go down, but the long shadows across the house and the yard just look like bars on a cell. I feel claustrophobic and, for some reason, needlessly terrified. It's hard to breathe, my lungs fighting the weight of the horror that feels out of place in the here and now._

_Is it the here and now? The edges of the world are soft, and I can't, I can't…_

"_Marco," Ma's voice is warped, brassy, deeper. "Marco? Marco!"_

"Marco!" Jean elbows me in the ribs, and I damn near jump out of my seat, whipping around with a strangled little yelp and a choked, paralyzed gasp before the panic settles and I take in my surroundings. Not the farm, and not a jail cell. A car, jolting down a dirt road in the dusty afternoon, Jean behind the wheel, his face worried and drawn. "Are you okay?"

My whole body aches. I don't know why I'm shaking. There's a constant fear curled in the back of my skull, I feel like squirming out of my skin with something other than a solid wall at my back, and I've got six months of hell straight out of the pages of someone's most fucked-up nightmares pressing at the lining of my chest. Am I okay?

_Sometimes when bad things happen, it's best not to think about 'em. You take stuff outta your nightmares and dwell on it, and it'll drive you crazy._

So I stop thinking about it, smile at him and reach down to squeeze his hand. "Never better, darlin'."

"It's just that you been staring out the window for an hour, and…"

"I'm just tired." Leave it at that. Please, for the love of my sanity, leave it at that.

He looks at me for a long moment, something in his eyes that says he doesn't quite believe me, but he doesn't press it. Instead, he exhales heavily and looks back out the windshield, drumming long fingers on the steering wheel. "You never said where we're headed. I've been driving north, right?"

"Huh?" I blink, still trying to tether myself to reality. Here with him is better than Eastham or Telico or any other living hell that's haunting my head, but I can't stop myself from feeling dissociated, set adrift and held only by the place where his fingers twine up with mine. "Oh, yeah. We're going to Dallas."

Jean pulls off on the side of the road with a cloud of dust and screeching brakes, turning back to me with wide eyes and the color draining from his face. "The hell we are."

"We gotta go back, or else-"

"I can't go back to Dallas!" he cuts me off, hands flying up to his hair and panic ratcheting his voice up half an octave. "I packed up all my shit and _left,_ Marco, and they know I'm gone by now. I can't just go back."

"Believe me, the last place I wanna go right now is Dallas!" I snap back, pinching the bridge of my nose and trying to stomp my fractured psyche into submission so I can fucking _think_ already. "But there's something in your house that I gotta get before we hit the road. I've been workin' on a plan for five months, Jean. I need you to trust me."

"I do. You know I do." The look he gives me is almost wounded, a hand brushing the side of my face but twitching away when I wince in pain as it skates over the bruises there. "I just… what could you have possibly left in my house that's important enough to run that risk?"

"The money I stole from the pawnshop back in July."

If possible, Jean goes even paler. "Jesus Christ."

"We need that money, or we're fucked. I wouldn't ask you to go back if we didn't have to," I tell him, reaching over with a still-shaking hand to smooth his hair down. I hope he doesn't notice the tremors, but the way he holds me a moment too long when I lean over to press my lips to his forehead says that he does. "Now drive. Please. The more distance I put between me and that place the better."

Jean eventually nods and pulls the Model T back out onto the road, his lips pressed into a thin line as he squints against the sunlight. "How much money'd you leave at the house?"

I shrug, trying to remember the number of stacks I'd shoved in the paper bag before hiding it in the linen closet and hoping Mrs. Kirschtein or Jean would find it after I was gone, a parting atonement. "Probably 'bout three-fifty, four hundred dollars."

Jean makes this weird wheezing-choking sound, one hand lifting off the wheel to scrub down the side of his face.

"I was gonna leave it for you and your folks, but due to circumstances, my contribution's gonna have to wait." I try to roll my shoulders, hoping to shrug off some of the discomfort that comes with having open space to my back, but the motion hurts so much that all I get for it is a low moan of pain and a panicked flash of the memory of what put the bruises there in the first place. I can't afford to think like that. The choice I have is to keep living or don't.

I decide to keep living, shove the screams to the back of my throat.

"So, what happens after we get the money?" he asks, and it's enough to draw me out of my own head, to bring my focus to the task at hand. As much as I talk about the value of never being weighed down, I'm indescribably glad to have Jean as an anchor right now.

"It's kinda complicated," I sigh, trying to rub some of the dried blood off my lips and only serving to reopen the split in them with a pained wince, the taste of copper coating my teeth. Rest. Rest needs to be on the agenda somewhere. Hadn't factored that in yet. "But if you're askin' what our next stop is, we're headed to Houston."

"Thought you said we were gonna go North."

"We will, after we go to Houston."

"But why-"

"Because I've actually been _thinking_ about this, Jean!" He practically recoils from the bullwhip-snap that covers the words, and a bloom of regret softens me for a moment before I remember that my damned softness is what landed me in this mess in the first place, grit my teeth and ball my hands up in my lap. I can't afford any more lapses, any more stupid mistakes. My last one resulted in _this,_ in months of praying to die in my sleep and nightmares that didn't end when I woke up and scars that go a hell of a lot further than skin deep. No more.

"And you think I haven't?" He murmurs, the horizon and the late afternoon sun mirrored amber in his irises. Damn it all.

He is so beautiful, and I am so weak.

"Well, given that you just busted me out of prison with an unloaded gun, I'm inclined to say 'no,' but…" Jean glares at me, and I can't help but laugh, the sound feeling odd and unused in my throat. "Just giving you a hard time, darlin'. But we really do need that money."

"I thought about this." He's not laughing it off, not letting me change the subject, his focus glued to the road and his grip going white-knuckled on the wheel. "I thought about you. Every day. And I tried not to, but here we are, so the least you can do is tell me what the hell you plan to do in Houston. We're in this shitstorm together now, Marco, and we have been since I pulled out that gun, so stop treatin' me like an accessory and start treatin' me like an accomplice, because God knows the law will if they catch us."

Silence falls for a moment, and I can't come up with a retort, because he's right. Being forthcoming has never been my strong suit, but for his sake, I'll try. Groaning, I rub a hand along the uninjured side of my jaw and let my eyes drift shut. "You got a fuckin' cigarette? This one's a doozy."

"Yeah, yeah, here," Jean nods, passing me a smoke and a book of matches, fingertips brushing the tendons across the back of my hand as he pulls away. God, six months and he goes from terror to tenderness where I'm concerned. It was almost worth it.

"All right, so if we're gonna do this, if we're gonna go on the road, we gotta be adequately prepared," I start, sparking the match to life on my thumbnail and lighting the cigarette with a grateful drag. "'Cause right now, we got one revolver and a box of bullets to our names, and that ain't gonna cut it. We need guns, we need ammo. I got a contact in Houston that can get us both. Problem is, I owe that contact a substantial amount of money."

Jean frowns and asks, "How much money?"

"I reckon about two hundred and fifty. Plus interest."

"God Almighty." Letting out a low whistle, he shakes his head and gives me a sidelong glance. "How'd you end up that far in the red?"

"I, uh." A nervous laugh sounds like a death rattle in my chest. "I may have been doing a job with Connie on a contract for this person and decided that it would be more prudent to run off with their share of the cash. And subsequently gotten arrested."

Jean's face is set in a perfect deadpan as he makes the turn for Dallas, voice flat when he speaks. "So your plan is to take stolen cash from my house, drive to Houston, make a house call to someone you _ripped off for two hundred and fifty dollars_ and ask 'em if they've got any spare artillery laying around."

"Two hundred and fifty plus interest," I mutter, scratching at the back of my neck.

"Great plan."

"You got any better ideas?!"

"Yeah, my vote goes to something that ain't gonna get us killed!" Sucking in a breath through his teeth, he lets his head fall back against the seat, tendons in his arms flexing from gripping the wheel too hard. "Y'know what, no. I trust you. It's probably gonna get me a load of grapeshot in my ass, but I trust you. We'll grab the money and get the hell out, and pray that my folks ain't home."

He trusts me. I'm in no mental state to try and figure out why that knowledge makes everything a little more bearable. Jean's trust doesn't erase any of this, can't take away the sleepless nights or heal the bruises, but it makes me rest a little easier in my seat as we continue up the road. For now, I don't have to be scared of leaving my back unguarded. He's got it.

Somewhere between the fork in the road and the outskirts of Dallas, he reaches down and grabs my hand. I finally stop shaking.

My choice is to keep living or don't. I've chosen life. I've chosen him. And if my demons and my memories have something to say about it, they'll wait until I'm more vulnerable than this to rear their heads. They always do.

Jean gets antsier the closer we get to Dallas, insists that we pull off the road and wait until after dark to drive to his house, something about his mother having bridge night on Sundays and the possibility of us sneaking in and out without anyone being home. Three hours parked in the stifling heat behind an abandoned gas station, dust blowing back and forth across the windshield of the Model T. Jean sleeps. I know better than to let myself slip into unconsciousness. The last thing he needs right now is to hear me wake up screaming.

Three hours, Jean sleeps, and I spend that time doing anything to stay out of the inside of my mind. I squint at my dim reflection in the window and try to clean up the dirt and dried blood plastered to my skin, do the best I can to wipe Eastham off of me with one of Jean's handkerchiefs and pure determination. I stare out the front of the car and pay close attention to the way the wind picks up the dust and swirls it around until it gets too dark to see. I curl up in the corner between my chair and the car door and just watch the steady rise and fall of Jean's chest for a while, the graceful arc of his spine as he curls inward and mumbles something in his sleep, the flutter of his eyelashes against his cheekbones. Those few precious nights before everything went to hell, the handful of times we sprawled out across his mattress in the dark laughing about stupid shit and kissing the smiles off each other's lips, he always left after I fell asleep, went back to the living room to sleep on the couch. Better that way, he said. No one would ask questions.

I think now that if I'd ever had the chance to see him like this in Dallas, I might have been persuaded to stay. For someone who claims to be as restless as I am, Jean has something about him that makes you feel settled, even against your will.

It's a stupid idea, but I still lean forward and ghost the pads of my fingers across the line of his cheekbone, the curve of his neck, trying to relearn him. He mutters something again and turns his head into the touch, flattening my palm against his cheek, and the little frown that's been furrowing his brow and pulling at his lips softens. My chest feels tight.

This was never supposed to happen. I went my entire life believing that it just wasn't something I was built for, and I was beyond fine with that. Being what I was, that was already complicated enough without throwing emotional attachment into the mix. I never wanted this before, never wanted the idea of my touch calming someone's nightmares, never considered making plans that revolved around waking up to the same face for more than a few nights in a row. I never wanted Jean to hit my veins like a full flask of whiskey in ten minutes flat, to send me reeling and grasping for anything to keep me from falling. I didn't want his crooked smile doing weird things to my heartbeat and I didn't want kissing him to feel like coming home and I sure as hell didn't want him to have to bust me out of jail because of whatever he feels on his end of the equation.

I didn't want to love him, but I do. That's the one thing in all of this that's guaranteed to not change. The law can haul me back in tomorrow, and I will love him. My plans can crumble to dust and float away on the wind, and I will love him. Everything can catch fire and collapse around us and the whole world can go to hell in a fast car, and I will love him. I will love him. I will love him.

Jean wakes up with a sharp jerk and wide eyes that calm once he sees me still sitting there. With a sleepy smile he looks over at me and asks, "You get any rest?"

"Yeah," I lie, looking out to the empty horizon as he starts the car again and pulls back onto the road. "Best sleep I've gotten in months."

I will swallow the screams and refuse to acknowledge the nightmares and I will _keep living,_ and I will love him.

Jean drives up his street with the headlights off, winces when he shuts the car door like the quiet click is a gunshot in the dark. There's no light coming from the house, but that doesn't seem to help the nervous tension tugging at his shoulders as we walk up onto the porch, his fingers trembling visibly even in the shadows as he reaches for the door.

"You sure you wanna come in?" he whispers. "You can wait in the car if you want."

I shake my head, reaching down to wrap my hand around his, turning the doorknob together. "If there's gonna be a confrontation, I got things to answer for just as much as you do. C'mon. We need to be quick."

Inside, it's dark and quiet. Everything is the same as it was the last time I was here, the radio hunkered down in the corner of the living room, the faucet in the kitchen dripping steadily. Our footsteps creak on the aging floorboards, and Jean winces, turning back to me and mouthing, "All right, where'd you leave it?"

"Linen closet, top shelf." He nods and shuffles carefully back towards the hallway, easing open the closet door and grimacing when the hinges creak. I feel useless standing there, shift my weight back and forth for a moment before I wave Jean down from the other end of the hall. "I'm gonna go grab stuff to eat from the kitchen. We can take some food on the road so we don't have to-"

"No."

"Jean-"

"_No,"_ he snaps, the low volume deceptively masking the stern tone as he whips around to glare at me, eyes hard. "I can do all the shit I did today, I can come back to Dallas and go do God-knows-what in Houston with you and hit the road on the run from the law, but we are _not_ stealin' so much as a goddamn saltine cracker from my family, you hear me?"

My strong-willed, stupidly noble boy. I try not to look too fond, know it'll probably just make him angry. "Well, I don't know if you've seen me lately, but I can't exactly walk into a diner and not raise any eyebrows."

"I don't _care,_ you're not-"

"Jean?" A thin, wavering soprano, scared and uncertain. A child's voice.

"_Shit,"_ I hiss, ducking into the kitchen and flattening myself against the wall. Jean would have blocked her view from the end of the hallway, and I was standing in the shadows to begin with.

"Jesus, Nettie." Jean lets out a wavering breath, and from where I'm standing I can see his face as he whips around, the paper bag in one hand while the other presses to his chest. "You scared me half to death. Where's… wait, are you here by yourself?"

"I'm s'posed to be at the Wagners', but I came home."

"You walked home alone in the dark? What have I told you about-"

"What'd you do, Jean?" Ninette says, her voice still not sounding like itself as she cuts him off, soft and on the edge of fear.

Jean sucks in a breath. "C'mon, let's get you back to the Wagners'."

"No!" And there's her fire again, the sudden shout splitting the still air. All I can see from the kitchen is her shadow, and it takes a step back, shaking its head. "No one'll tell me what's going on, and I ain't going nowhere 'til you tell me!"

"Nettie, I don't even know what all's happening right now, okay? But you shouldn't be here on your own." He squats down in front of her, a hand coming up to brush her hair back from her face.

"Ma came home from bridge night and we were having dinner and Eren came runnin' in here like a house on fire, said he needed to talk to her and shoved me out on the porch. They talked for a bit and then Ma came out all pale and stuff and told me to run on up to the Wagners'. I couldn't hear nothing they said, but Eren was crying his eyes out, Jean; I ain't never seen Eren cry before."

"Oh, God." Jean sounds absolutely mortified, and I have to bite back a growl of rage, because of _course _Eren would come running straight to his family, of-fucking-_course_ he would.

"You did something, didn't you?" Nettie whispers, the betrayal in the words so profound that it even hurts me, and I'm not the person it's aimed at. "Something bad."

Jean sighs again, standing back up, and says, "You might as well come on out."

We could have gone without the money. We could have done a job somewhere between Eastham and Houston and avoided this entirely, and I would have taken the risk over this, over carving a smile into my face and forcing myself to step around the corner in all my battered lack of glory. "Evenin', Miss Ninette."

She's grown in the last five months, as children tend to do, taller and even ganglier, all coltish limbs and scraped elbows and amber eyes widening from across the hallway. It's hard to see the details in the dark, but I notice every ounce of disbelief etched into her face as she walks past Jean and over to me, trace the progression of shock to anger.

And I see every motion of her hand balling up into a fist, thumb on the outside, before it cracks right across my already bruised jaw.

Pain and the taste of blood explode in my mouth, the impact whipping me to the side so hard that I have to hunch over to keep from falling right on my ass, looking over at Ninette's livid expression and swiping the back of my hand across my mouth. The skin comes back stained sticky red. "Been workin' on that right hook, little darlin'?"

Her lower lip wobbles for a moment, eyes swimming before she lunges forward again. I half expect a punch to the gut, but instead she throws her arms around my waist and clings, shaking and biting back sobs. "I oughta beat the tar outta you."

"Probably, yeah, but I think someone's done the job for you already." Levity. Light. If I can joke about it, I can push it back, can ignore the uneasy tingle crawling up my spine.

"Ma said you tried to steal all the money from that grocery store," Ninette replies flatly, stepping back and looking up at me.

"I've stolen lots of things," I admit. No use lying to her now.

"Yeah." She's got the same look Jean does, the one that makes you feel like she's looking right through you, seeing your ulterior motives even before you do. "And now you're gonna steal Jean, ain't you?"

"Nettie…" Jean starts.

"He is!" Furiously, she whips around and smacks a hand against his chest, shaking where she stands and pawing the tear streaks from her cheeks. "You two are gonna run off. That's why Eren was so upset and Ma looked so scared. He's stealing you."

And that was the plan all along, wasn't it? Stealing him? From the day I decided that Jean wasn't something I could leave behind, I had every intention of taking him from the people he loved with no regrets. I never considered the consequences because I've never given a damn about the people I stole from, but that's just another weakness that snuck up to cripple me long before I ever noticed it. I caved for Jean, and I caved for his family. I caved for the sweetness his mother showed me that I couldn't remember from my own. I caved for the bits of Maura that I saw in Ninette, for the parts of her that were entirely her own. In one month of stillness, I painted three massive targets on my own back, and right now it feels like there's a bullet sinking home in each of them.

See, this is what happens when you let people in. The human body has trouble carrying one broken soul around. When you try to take on more, you start to crumble.

"Ninette, listen." Even the smallest movement still hurts, but I bite back the ache rocketing through my limbs long enough to sit down on the couch and gently tug her over by the wrist. We used to be at eye level like this, her standing and me sittting. Now I have to look up, plaintive in some weirdly fitting sort of way. "I promise that nothin' bad is gonna happen to Jean, okay? Cross my heart and hope to die."

"Why should I believe you?"

"Well, there's a long list of people who'll tell you that you probably shouldn't, Eren Jaeger being at the top of it," I grumble, wondering how weak I've gotten that the waylaid faith of a nine-year-old is enough to wound me. But in the wake of that thought, an idea takes root in my mind, and I give her hand a little squeeze before letting go and looking at her over steepled fingers. "But if you want, we can handle this like a business transaction. You know what collateral is?"

Ninette frowns, fixing me with a skeptical look. "It's something you give the bank, I know that much."

"Right. See, when the bank loans you money, you put something up as collateral for it. Sometimes it's a house, or a car, something important to you. You're promising the bank that you'll take care of what they gave you and give it back the same way it was when you got it, and if you don't, they keep your collateral."

"You wanna give me collateral for my brother," she deadpans.

I shrug, kicking my feet up on the coffee table and trying not to wince. "If you'll accept it, yeah."

Ninette seems to mull it over for a minute, looking between Jean and me a few times before she crosses her arms tightly over her chest and nods her head sharply. "What'll you give me?"

"Well, I ain't got much by way of material goods at the moment," I tell her, counting off my necessities and possessions on one hand. "I need the car. I need the clothes on my back. I need what money I got. But we can think of something."

"It don't gotta be something big. You said something important, right? Something that means a lot to you?"

What do I have that means a lot to me? Jean, obviously, but he's the one I'm bargaining for at the moment. And before him, there were only my plans, my delusions of grandeur and the schemes I wove to achieve them. Before him, there was only gunpowder and car chases, sprinting footfalls across a prison yard, Connie's ragged breaths beside me, the shadows of a burglarized house and the hum of a stolen engine. There's no way to take all those plans and give them to her, no material vessel that holds all they represent.

Well. Maybe there is.

Smirking, I yank the worn old newsboy cap off my head and place it carefully on hers, tilting it to the side so it sits crookedly on top of her messy blonde hair. "Why, I think it looks perfect on you, Miss Ninette."

She runs her fingers contemplatively over the brim of the cap, lips pressed into a thin line. "And this means you gotta bring him back safe."

"You have my solemn vow."

"We need to go," Jean whispers, looking out the front window even though there are no headlights coming down the street. "God knows when Mom and Eren'll get back, and that's a conversation I don't wanna have."

I can't fault him there, humming in assent and hauling myself off the couch with a choked little groan of pain as Jean walks back over and pulls his sister into his arms, a hand smoothing down the hair that the cap's ruffled into a mess. I'm glad that I can't see his face from this angle. I've watched him break on my behalf enough times without adding this to the list.

"I won't tell anyone I saw you," Ninette croaks, fighting tears again and valiantly wiping at her eyes when she takes a step back.

"Thank you," Jean sighs in relief, bending over and pressing a quick kiss to her forehead. "Now, listen. You gotta follow three rules while I'm gone. Rule number one, you stay in school. No cuttin' class, no dropping out to get a job selling newspapers or something. Rule number two, no fightin'..."

Nettie lets out a wordless squawk of protest.

"...unless Tom Wagner hits you first, and if that's the case, you kick his ass," he finishes, grinning. "And rule number three, I want you to mind-"

"Mind Ma, yeah, I know."

"No, minding Mom is implied." Shaking his head, Jean bends down to her level again, cradling her face between his palms. "I want you to mind Eren. He promised me that he'd take care of you and Mom if I was ever gone. You remind him of that promise. And if he tells you to do something, you do it, understand?"

"Yeah, yeah," she rolls her eyes, shoving Jean's shoulder with a smirk I can tell she doesn't quite mean. "Get outta here, knucklehead. You're the worst outlaw ever."

"Well, I got time to practice. I love you, kiddo." Jean hugs her again before standing up and making his way over to the front door, pausing on the threshold and just sort of staring around the place.

I never had the chance to look at what I was leaving behind, dodging blows as I left and running until my legs couldn't hold me up anymore. And standing here, watching him, I begin to wonder if I didn't almost have it better. I didn't have time to think of what I'd lost until it was already out of my reach, didn't have to tear myself away because that had already been done for me. Jean has a different sort of strength than getting up from a beating and walking away with your head held high. He's got the kind of strength it takes to stand there and watch everything he has right in front of him, to make the decision to turn around and walk down the porch steps with a shaky breath and a muttered "I'll be sure to write."

For all the weakness I've gained because of Jean, I've only seen him get stronger. It's a strange dichotomy, this give-and-take spiral of loving and letting go that we've tugged ourselves into, but I can't help but think that freedom looks good on him even through his heavy heart, a spark in him that wasn't there before. It's dim beneath the sadness that weighs him down on the way to the car, but it's there. And it's beautiful. And he's beautiful. And this is what we have now, no second guesses or turning back.

Our choice is to keep living, or don't. Jean chose life over a decades-long suffocation in Dallas. And that, that's enough to make me a little braver in the face of all the blackened memories tugging me backwards to Eastham and the things I'm telling myself that I don't remember.

"I can drive if you want," I offer, noticing how tightly he's gripping the wheel once we get back on the road headed south.

"No." Jean shakes his head, staring intensely at the small circle of road in the headlights and nudging the speedometer a little higher. "No, I want to. I'll drive 'til I'm tired and we'll find somewhere to stay."

It's a clear night with a bright moon, but I don't say anything about the way it catches the wet lines across his cheekbones thirty minutes out of Dallas. Sometimes we don't want to be alone with our weaknesses. I reach over after another mile and rest my hand over his on the gearshift, and he clings back like I'm a lifeline he has no idea is fraying by the second.

We've chosen to live. Now it's just a matter of figuring out how to do it with both of us broken and more lost than we'll admit.

Somewhere to stay ends up being some roadside motel outside of Huntsville that looks like it's seen better days. Jean handles the checking in since he's the one who doesn't look like he's gotten on the wrong side of a prizefighter, and I sit in the car until he comes back swinging a clunky keychain around his finger and opens door number 12 with a flourish. I don't have any bags to haul in with me, but my body feels heavy enough, shoulders slumped by the time I make it in out of the dusty night. The room's got faded carpet and peeling wallpaper, but there's an inviting-looking double bed made up against the far wall, something Jean and I both stop and look at for a few seconds, the implications of it sitting unspoken between us until he breaks the silence.

"Guess I don't have to go sleep on the couch tonight," he breathes, running a hand over the threadbare duvet before bringing it up to press against the spot on my ribcage where why heartbeat thrums the loudest.

"Guess not," I nod, but before I have time to say anything else his lips are on mine and everything blurs into a heated confusion, my bruised jaw aching sweetly beneath his touch and split lips stinging where they meet his. It's not as graceless as the frantic kiss back in the cell block, more calculated, more careful. Jean's taking his time, and for a moment, I'm inclined to let him.

But then in some odd time skip my shirt's ended up on the floor and there are fingertips skating up my spine and oh God no what not again-

Panic. Blind, knee-jerk reaction panic that slams into me with lethal force. This is what jumping off a skyscraper must be like. My bones shake and I feel my insides liquify before they _convulse,_ arms flailing wildly until I'm out of the grip that holds me and a good five yards away, gasping for air and fighting the bitter sting of bile rising in my throat. My heart is slamming against my eardrums with loud, wet thumps and nothing makes _sense,_ surroundings blurring, iron bars and ugly wallpaper, concrete and carpet, and I don't know where I am, I don't…

"Marco? Sweetheart, are you okay?"

Jean. That's where I am. That's who I'm with. The panic doesn't disappear, but it dissipates, becomes manageable. I suck in a ragged breath and shake my head, grasping for words. "I'm…"

I'm not even close to okay and I haven't been since they put me in that hellhole. I'm not telling you even a fraction of what happened in there and I don't ever intend to because knowing the truth would break you like living it broke me. I'm scared that I came out of there a different person than the one who went in, and I'm starting to think that I've just been putting Old Me on like a costume to stay functional. I'm scared. I'm lost. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

"I'm gonna go take a bath," I choke out, running a hand through my hair and cringing at how dirty it is. "I'm disgusting right now. Nice long soak'll do me good."

I run the water so hot that steam clogs up the bathroom and I feel like the skin is about to scald right off my bones, and it doesn't do me any good. I grab a washcloth and scrub until there's no more dirt or dried blood and I'm raw and pink and look like I've been flayed alive, and it doesn't do me any good. I wash my hair three times and watch the soap bubbles pop in the water one by one, and it doesn't do me any good. The water goes murky with all the grime, and even though my head's well above the top of the tub I still feel like I'm drowning, still feel five months that I'm trying so hard not to remember crawling under my skin.

I chose to live, but it's a harder decision than it sounds when you've been dead inside for a long damn time.

Somewhere between that realization and the last bit of soap fading out into the dirty water, the full impact hits, the levee breaks, all the walls I put up in my head long enough to get me out of Eastham and out of immediate danger crumble like paper beneath a tidal wave, and I don't even notice the horrid, gasping, would-be screams clawing up my throat until they start to hurt, curled up in a chipped porcelain tub with my head pressed to my knees and trying for all I'm worth to yank the hair right out of my head.

The door to the bathroom opening doesn't process, and I'm too far into my own head to recognize the hands prying my fingers off my scalp until I've already flown into a borderline-animalistic fight to get them _off_ and slopped half the water out of the tub, fighting until Jean's voice cuts through the terror, "Hey, you're okay, you're okay, it's me, you're safe, you're okay."

It's like clicking a switch. A breaker blowing. Instant shutdown.

There's no resistance as I somehow end up pulled to my feet and wrapped in some ungodly mess of towels and led back into the room, dressed like some sort of living doll and tucked under blankets curled up against Jean's chest. I don't think I blink once the entire time, eyes wide and vacant until something flips the switch again and I start shaking, clinging to his shirt and sucking in deep gulps of air.

Sometimes we don't want to be alone with our weaknesses.

"You're okay now," he whispers, and I don't have the heart to call him a liar, to tell him that he hasn't quite gotten what he signed up for. "We're gonna do everything we said we were. You and me. You're safe and you're _out,_ Marco, you're outta there, okay, just breathe."

Am I? Am I really? Being shattered was never part of the plan. I never factored in time to spend putting myself back together, and shivering under worn-out blankets in a shitty motel room doesn't seem like any kind of place to start doing it. You can't put yourself together without finding a solid place to do it, and I can't stay in one place for too long without falling apart. I am a paradox. I am the worst kind of paradox, and I am doomed to functional brokenness at my absolute best.

"I'll never get out, Jean," I whisper into the dark hours later, not even sure if he's asleep or not. "I'll never get out."

My best shot is running with everything I've got in me and praying that eventually I'll find a door.


End file.
